Question

I’m wondering if it’s possible to paste a character as a token in C at runtime. Something like,

a = OPERATION(3, 4, '+')

will be processed to,

a = 3 + 4  

Is there a way to do this?

Edit: I wanted to add some more information. Obviously this can’t be done with the preprocessor. I’m wondering if there’s a short way to do,

int i;
char sign[] = "+-*/";
for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
  printf("%d\n", OPERATION(3, 5, sign[i]));

I know we can create a function as,

int OPERATION(int a, int b, char c);

But this is not what I’m asking.

Answer 1

How about this:

#define OPERATION( A, B, OP )   ((A) OP (B))

However, as delnan notes below, you would have to modify your call to:

a = OPERATION(3, 4, +)