branch in english means several things, one of them, the limb of a tree.
So you have a shape like a Y on its side, sort of, if you see what I mean. This visual will help a little below.
In a computer program (or the hardware), a branch is a block of code that runs after a condition, or the condition itself.
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|
if (something)
{
code
}
else
{
other code
}
| |
the "if (something)" statement creates a branch.. or a 'fork in the road' scenario where the code can go 'left' or 'right'.
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/ true: do 'code'
something____________
\false: do 'other code
| |
and that is all they are saying. So in usage, "the code branches at line 20" would indicate the condition itself, and "you can see in the 'true' branch that there is a bug here..." would indicate the code inside the condition. So it can mean either the junction where the code chooses a path or one of the paths, depending on the context of the rest of the words around it.
#define of constants is avoided in modern C++. If that is what the teacher provided, its fine, or how you were told to do it, fine, but be aware that it is bad practice because the value loses its strong typing in a macro.
If you want a lot more words than I used try
https://press.rebus.community/programmingfundamentals/chapter/branching-statements/#:~:text=A%20branch%20is%20an%20instruction,continue%20%2C%20return%20%2C%20and%20goto%20.
or do your own search on 'what is branch in computer science'