Question

Is there a way to, at runtime, map the value of an enum to the name? (I’m building with GCC.)

I know GDB can do it and I’m willing to use something that’s unportable and mucks with debug data.

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Edit: I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t require modifying the original enum declaration nor hand copying all the values out in a mapping function. I already know how to do both of those.

Effectively; I want a function that does whatever GDB does when it formats runtime enum values.

Answer 1

If you don’t want to invest the time to utilize GCCs symbol information, gcc-xml provides you information about C++ sources in a reusable XML format, including enumeration names.

Simplified example… this source:

enum E {
  e1 = 1,
  e2 = 42
};

becomes:

<GCC_XML>
  <!-- ... -->
  <Enumeration name="E">
    <EnumValue name="e1" init="1"/>
    <EnumValue name="e2" init="42"/>
  </Enumeration>
  <!-- ... -->
</GCC_XML>