Question

Possible Duplicate:
C++: Print out enum value as text

Say I have an enumeration:

typedef enum MyEnum_
{
  MY_ENUM_BLUE,
  MY_ENUM_RED,
  MY_ENUM_GREEN
} MyEnum;

And that I have a method that gets an “MyEnum” as parameter. I’d like write to log file the value of that MyEnum, but I don’t want 0, 1 or 2 to appear there— I’d like to output the actual enumeration string “MY_ENUM_xxxx”, of course without a switch/case block….. and dealing with each value individually.

Is there some trickery or pattern, in c++ or using macros that would help me achieve that?

Answer 1

No need to typedef in c++

enum MyEnum_
{
  MY_ENUM_BLUE,
  MY_ENUM_RED,
  MY_ENUM_GREEN
} MyEnum;

#define TOSTR(x) #x

const char *names[]={TOSTR(MY_ENUM_BLUE),
               TOSTR(MY_ENUM_RED),
               TOSTR(MY_ENUM_GREEN)};

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
   MyEnum_ e=MY_ENUM_RED;

   std::cout << names[e] << std::endl;

   return 0;
}