Question

I have an application which needs to define indexes in various .h files in a hierarchical manner. There is a large set of common entries in a single file and a number of variant header files that are pulled in to specific projects.

In file: “base.h”

   #define AAA 1
   #define BBB 2
   #define CCC 3

In many files like: “variant_extended.h”

   #define XXX 4
   #define YYY 5
   #define ZZZ 6

However, this is cumbersome, is there a simple way to carry on from base.h and auto-number the defines in the build process?

I am frequently editing the files to reorder or insert new entries which leads to a lot of manual management. I need to also, ensure the numbers start at 0 and are contiguous. These will be indexes in an array (like mailboxes).

Answer 1

To expand on Jerry’s comment:

// base.h
enum BaseCodes
{
   AAA = 1,
   BBB,
   CCC,
   FirstExtendedCode
};

// extended.h
enum ExtendedCodes
{
  XXX = FirstExtendedCode,
  YYY,
  ZZZ
}

In this case, ZZZ is guaranteed to be 6. Insert new members into the enums automatically renumbers all the other members.