Easy way to use variables of enum types as string in C?

Question

Here\'s what I am trying to do:

typedef enum { ONE, TWO, THREE } Numbers;

I am trying to write a function that would do a switch case sim

Answer 1

There is definitely a way to do this -- use X() macros. These macros use the C preprocessor to construct enums, arrays and code blocks from a list of source data. You only need to add new items to the #define containing the X() macro. The switch statement would expand automatically.

Your example can be written as follows:

 // Source data -- Enum, String
 #define X_NUMBERS \
    X(ONE,   "one") \
    X(TWO,   "two") \
    X(THREE, "three")

 ...

 // Use preprocessor to create the Enum
 typedef enum {
  #define X(Enum, String)       Enum,
   X_NUMBERS
  #undef X
 } Numbers;

 ...

 // Use Preprocessor to expand data into switch statement cases
 switch(num)
 {
 #define X(Enum, String) \
     case Enum:  strcpy(num_str, String); break;
 X_NUMBERS
 #undef X

     default: return 0; break;
 }
 return 1;

There are more efficient ways (i.e. using X Macros to create an string array and enum index), but this is the simplest demo.