Question

Say you want to generate a matched list of identifiers and strings

enum { NAME_ONE, NAME_TWO, NAME_THREE };  myFunction(NAME_ONE, 'NAME_ONE'); myFunction(NAME_TWO, 'NAME_TWO'); myFunction(NAME_THREE, 'NAME_THREE'); 

..without repeating yourself, and without auto-generating the code, using C/C++ macros

Initial guess:

You could add an #include file containing

myDefine(NAME_ONE) myDefine(NAME_TWO) myDefine(NAME_THREE) 

Then use it twice like:

#define myDefine(a) a, enum { #include 'definitions' } #undef myDefine  #define myDefine(a) myFunc(a, 'a'); #include 'definitions' #undef myDefine 

but #define doesn’t let you put parameters within a string?

Answer 1

For your second #define, you need to use the # preprocessor operator, like this:

#define myDefine(a) myFunc(a, #a); 

That converts the argument to a string.