An advantage of inline or template methods/functions is that they don't have side-effects as macros have (see [PRE#003]). Another advantage is that inline or template methods/functions are type-safe.

A macro "function" can be defined as a template function, as in:

#define MAX(p1, p2) (((p1) > (p2)) ? (p1) : (p2))

template<class T> T&
Max(
    const T& p1,
    const T& p2);