Macro that expands its only argument into its component characters - c++

Is it possible to write a macro in C/C++ pre-processer that expands its single argument to the component characters it is composed of
For example
EXPAND( abcd )
would expand to
'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'
Other examples are
EXPAND( 1 )
'1'
EXPAND( 12 )
'1', '2'
EXPAND( func_name )
'f', 'u', 'n', 'c', '_', 'n', 'a', 'm', 'e'
EDIT:
The purpose would be to pass a character sequence as a parameter to a template like the one below
template<char... args>
struct Struct {
...
};
Instead of having to code the tedious
Struct<'a', 'b', 'c'>
one would simply do
Struct<EXPAND( abc )>
Ideally it would be best if one could code
Struct<"abc">
but string literals are not converted into char... sequences automatically.

No. This functionality is not provided by the C preprocessor.
Depending on your use case, a string might be equivalent (except for the null byte), so stringifying might work as well.
You might have a look at m4, a more advanced preprocessor by K&R. Maybe it provides the functionality you need.

Related

Is there a function for moving the contents of a char array a certain amount of addresses back in C++?

I have the following code for Arduino (C++). This is for a checksum consisting of 2 characters forming a base 16 value between 0 and 255. It takes int outputCheckSum and converts it to char outputCheckSumHex[3].
itoa (outputCheckSum, outputCheckSumHex, 16)
if (outputCheckSum < 16) { //Adds a 0 if CS has fewer than 2 numbers
outputCheckSumHex[1] = outputCheckSumHex[0];
outputCheckSumHex[0] = '0';
}
Since the output of itoa would be "X" instead of "0X" in the event of X having fewer than 2 characters, the last 3 lines are to move the characters one step back.
I now have plans to scale this up to a CS of 8 characters, and I was wondering whether there exists a function in C++ that can achieve that before I start writing more code. Please let me know if more information is required.
You should be able to use memmove, it's one of the legacy C functions rather than C++ but it's available in the latter (in cstring header) and handles overlapping memory correctly, unlike memcpy.
So, for example, you could use:
char buff[5] = {'a', 'b', 'c', '.', '.'};
memmove(&(buff[2]), &(buff[0], 3);
// Now it's {'a', 'b', 'a', 'b', 'c'} and you can replace the first two characters.
Alternatively, you could use std::copy from the algorithm header but, for something this basic, memmove should be fine.
You can use memmove in <cstring> for this. It does not check for terminating null characters, but instead copies num bytes (third argument) and works with overlapping regions as well.
void* memmove(void* destination, const void* source, size_t num);

What does the OpenGL command suffix 'v' represent?

Generally, OpenGL commands has a suffix like 'i', 'f', 'v', etc. I know it's specifying the parameter type.
void glGetBooleanv(GLenum pname, GLboolean *params);
Why is 'v' used for a pointer and what word does it represent?
From the standard:
A final v character, if present, indicates that the command takes a pointer to an array (a vector) of values rather than a series of individual arguments
– OpenGL 4.5 Specification, Page 11

C/C++: Inherent ambiguity of "\xNNN" format in literal strings

Consider these two strings:
wchar_t* x = L"xy\x588xla";
wchar_t* y = L"xy\x588bla";
Upon reading this you would expect that both string literals are the same except one character - an 'x' instead of a 'b'.
It turns out that this is not the case. The first string compiles to:
y = {'x', 'y', 0x588, 'x', 'l', 'a' }
and the second is actually:
x = {'x', 'y', 0x588b, 'l', 'a' }
They are not even the same length!
Yes, the 'b' is eaten up by the hex representation ('\xNNN') character.
At the very least, this could cause confusion and subtle bugs for in hand-written strings (you could argue that unicode strings don't belong in the code body)
But the more serious problem, and the one I am facing, is in auto-generated code. There just doesn't seem to be any way to express this: {'x', 'y', 0x588, 'b', 'l', 'a' } as a literal string without resorting to writing the entire string in hex representation, which is wasteful and unreadable.
Any idea of a way around this?
What's the sense in the language behaving like this?
A simple way is to use compile time string literal concatenation, thus:
wchar_t const* y = L"xy\x588" L"bla";

What Kind Of Macro Is this?

I came across this following code:
#include<stdio.h>
#define d(x) x(#x[3])
int main(){
d(putchar);
}
Which prints c as the output. I wonder what does the macro #define d(x) x(#x[3]) does? In C language is there an operator like #? I can see this inside the macro body i.e here x(#x[3]). According to my normal eye it looks something different I see in C language but actually What does this does?
Edit : Whats the real use of # in real world?
I'm a novice in C and it will be good if the explanation is in simple terms. Thanks in advance.
The character '#' is a stringizer -- it turns a symbol into a string. The code becomes
putchar("putchar"[3]);
The hash sign means "stringify", so d(x) expands to putchar("putchar"[3]), whence the c.
From here:
Function macro definitions accept two special operators (# and ##) in the replacement sequence:
If the operator # is used before a parameter is used in the replacement sequence, that parameter is replaced by a string literal (as if it were enclosed between double quotes)
#define str(x) #x
cout << str(test);
Put simply, it changes the "x" parameter into a string. In this case test becomes a char array containing 't', 'e', 's', 't', '\0'.
The # is a pre-processor operator which turns a literal into a string. In fact your d macro prints the fourth char of the converted string of your literal.

Enumerating digits

For my book class I'm storing an ISBN number and I need to validate the data entered so I decided to use enumeration. (First three inputs must be single digits, last one must be a letter or digit.) However, I'm wondering if it is even possible to enumerate numbers. Ive tried putting them in as regular integers, string style with double quotes, and char style with single quotes.
Example:
class Book{
public:
enum ISBN_begin{
'0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9'
};
enum ISBN_last{
'0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', a, b, c, d, e, f,
g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z};
The compiler error says expected identifier which means that its seeing the numbers as values for the identifiers and not identifiers themselves. So is enumerating digits possible?
I think you're going about this the wrong way...why not just use a simple regex that will validate the entire thing a bit more simply?
(yes, I know, that wasn't the original question, but it might make your life a lot easier.)
This page and this page provide some good examples on using regex to validate isbn numbers.
I think creating an enumeration whose values are equal to the entities they're enumerating...I think you're doing a lot more than you have to.
Why would you want to enumerate numbers? Enums exist to give numbers a name. If you want to store a number, store an integer - or in this case a char (as you also need characters to be stored). For validation, accept a string and write a function like this:
bool ISBN_Validate(string val)
{
if (!val.length == <length of ISBN>) return false;
if (val[0] < '0' || val[0] > '9') return false;
foreach (char ch in val)
{
if (ch is not between '0' and 'z') return false;
}
}
Easy - and no silly enumerations ;)
#include <ctype.h>
Don't forget the basics. The above include file gives you isalpha(), isdigit(), etc.
I would suggest using a string for each of the begin/end criteria, ie:
string BeginCriteria = "0123456789";
string EndCriteria = "0123456789abcd... so forth";
// Now to validate the input
// for the first three input characters:
if ( BeginCriteria.find( chInput ) != npos )
// Then its good.
// For the last 3 characters:
if ( EndCriteria.find( chInput ) != npos )
// Then its good.
enums really aren't what you want to use. They aren't sets like that. The members of an enum have to be symbols like variables or function names and you can give them values.
enum numbers { One = 1, Two, Three };
One after this is equivalent to a named constant with integer value 1. numbers is equivalent to a new type with a subrange of integer values.
What you probably want is to use a regular expression.
You would have to do something like this:
enum ISBN_begin {
ZERO, ONE, TWO // etc.
};
If you can't use regular expressions, why not just use an array of char instead? You could even use the same array, and just have a const index number where the ISBN_last chars begin in the array.
enums are not defined with literals, they are defined with variables
Some languages (Ada for one) allows what you want, so your request is not too silly. You are simply forgetting that in C and C++, character literals are just another form of integer literals (of type int in C, of type char in C++)