Can an initialization of an enum be automated?

Question

I am having a file of strings by which I want to create an enum with values named by the strings. For example the list is:

"a" "b" "c" "d" ...

I would like to get an enum like this

enum SomeEnum { a, b, c, d };

Thanks.

Do you mean that you want to generate C source code for an enum, or that you want to generate an enum at runtime? The former is easy if you know how to read and write files, the latter is not possible. If it is the former, please specify what you're having trouble with. — interjay, Jun 14 '12 at 08:28
I think that would work, I could just write out a .h file with the enum in it. Thanks. — mihajlv, Jun 14 '12 at 08:32
This sort of question has already been asked many times before: possible duplicate of [How to convert enum names to string in c](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9907160/how-to-convert-enum-names-to-string-in-c) — Jens Gustedt, Jun 14 '12 at 09:48

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 14 '12 at 09:09

2

I suggest that you use any of the popular scripting languages (perl, python, tcl) and parse the file and generate enums that you like.

edited Jun 14 '12 at 09:09

sloth

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answered Jun 14 '12 at 08:26

Bo.

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or a clever text editor if the work needs to be done only once. – wap26 Jun 14 '12 at 08:33
@wap26: I definitively agree :). – Bo. Jun 14 '12 at 08:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 14 '12 at 09:02

You could use X-Macros, then you only need to place your enum/string in the myfile.h.

myFile.h

#ifndef ENUM_CONVERT
#define ENUM_CONVERT(val)  val
#define ENUM_HEADER enum SomeEnum
#endif

ENUM_HEADER
{
ENUM_CONVERT(a),
ENUM_CONVERT(b),
ENUM_CONVERT(c),
ENUM_CONVERT(d)
};

myFile.c

#include "myFile.h"  // This declares the enum
#define MKSTR(a)           #a
#define ENUM_CONVERT(val)  MKSTR(val)
#define ENUM_HEADER        char *myStrList[]=
#include "myFile.h"  // This defines the stringList

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 14 '12 at 08:27

0

It is difficult in c to convert string into a variable

answered Jun 14 '12 at 08:27

Riskhan

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Can an initialization of an enum be automated?

3 Answers3

myFile.h

myFile.c