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Asked: 2026-05-27T16:33:52+00:00

I have some code that needs Unicode strings for the most part, but I

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I have some code that needs Unicode strings for the most part, but I want to make it conditional (ie, TEXT("string") expanding to L"string" or "string", depending on settings). For these, I use the macro:

#ifdef _UNICODE
#    define VSTR(str) L##str
#else
#    define VSTR(str) str
#endif

The main complication with this is printf format strings, which use %s and %S for same-encoding and other-encoding strings, respectively. Some strings come from similarly conditional APIs (TCHAR and similar), while some come from set APIs (mostly C-string only). When using _tprintf and family, the function used can vary making %s and %S conditional as well, and they may need to be flipped around. To handle this, I defined macros to the appropriate format elements:

#ifdef _UNICODE
#    define VPFCSTR(str) "%S"
#    define VPFWSTR(str) "%s"
#    define VPFTSTR(str) VPFWSTR(str)
#else
#    define VPFCSTR(str) "%s"
#    define VPFWSTR(str) "%S"
#    define VPFTSTR(str) VPFCSTR(str)
#else

Now, this all works fine, but forces the syntax:

VSTR("Beginning of a format string, with a string '") VPFTSTR VSTR("' included.")

I would like to be able to use a syntax like:

VSTR("Beginning of a format string, with a string '", VPFTSTR, "' included.")

For Unicode, this needs to expand to:

L"Beginning of a format string, with a string '" L"%s" L"' included."

The only complication is the variable number of arguments, all of which need to be transformed in the same manner (one by one, if necessary).

My first idea was to use __VA_ARGS__ to handle this, using empty arguments, like:

VASTR(str, ...) VSTR(str) VASTR(__VA_ARGS__)

Unfortunately, as macros can’t be used in their own definition, this fails. I then attempted a proxy:

VASTR2(...) VASTR(__VA_ARGS__)
VASTR(str, ...) VSTR(str) VASTR2(__VA_ARGS__)

The proxy method doesn’t appear to work either.

Is there a way to handle running the same macro on each argument of a(nother) macro, which takes a variable number of arguments? Or, if not, is there an equivalent? If compiler-specific, MSVC10 is preferred, but anything is of interest.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Recursive macro expansion is not possible in C/C++.

    Not sure, but C++0x allows you to omit encoding prefix for string literal concatenation. Thus you can try design your macro to prepend L only to the first string literal and use it as follows:

    VSTR("Beginning of a format string, with a string '" VPFTSTR "' included.")

    Please, correct me, if I’m wrong.

    UPD.

    A similar Unicode-related question: What happens with adjacent string literal concatenation when there is a modifier(L, u8, etc.)

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