Is there a simple way to convert C++ enum to string?

Edu_Felipe_21648 0
Viewed 145033

Suppose we have some named enums:

enum MyEnum {
      FOO,
      BAR = 0x50
};

What I googled for is a script (any language) that scans all the headers in my project and generates a header with one function per enum.

char* enum_to_string(MyEnum t);

And a implementation with something like this:

char* enum_to_string(MyEnum t){
      switch(t){
         case FOO:
            return "FOO";
         case BAR:
            return "BAR";
         default:
            return "INVALID ENUM";
      }
 }

The gotcha is really with typedefed enums, and unnamed C style enums. Does anybody know something for this?

EDIT: The solution should not modify my source, except for the generated functions. The enums are in an API, so using the solutions proposed until now is just not an option.

enums scripting c++ string
35 Answers

X-macros are the best solution. Example:

#include <iostream>

enum Colours {
#   define X(a) a,
#   include "colours.def"
#   undef X
    ColoursCount
};

char const* const colours_str[] = {
#   define X(a) #a,
#   include "colours.def"
#   undef X
    0
};

std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, enum Colours c)
{
    if (c >= ColoursCount || c < 0) return os << "???";
    return os << colours_str[c];
}

int main()
{
    std::cout << Red << Blue << Green << Cyan << Yellow << Magenta << std::endl;
}

colours.def:

X(Red)
X(Green)
X(Blue)
X(Cyan)
X(Yellow)
X(Magenta)

However, I usually prefer the following method, so that it's possible to tweak the string a bit.

#define X(a, b) a,
#define X(a, b) b,

X(Red, "red")
X(Green, "green")
// etc.
user_279090

You may want to check out GCCXML.

Running GCCXML on your sample code produces:

<GCC_XML>
  <Namespace id="_1" name="::" members="_3 " mangled="_Z2::"/>
  <Namespace id="_2" name="std" context="_1" members="" mangled="_Z3std"/>
  <Enumeration id="_3" name="MyEnum" context="_1" location="f0:1" file="f0" line="1">
    <EnumValue name="FOO" init="0"/>
    <EnumValue name="BAR" init="80"/>
  </Enumeration>
  <File id="f0" name="my_enum.h"/>
</GCC_XML>

You could use any language you prefer to pull out the Enumeration and EnumValue tags and generate your desired code.

user_204870

@hydroo: Without the extra file:

#define SOME_ENUM(DO) \
    DO(Foo) \
    DO(Bar) \
    DO(Baz)

#define MAKE_ENUM(VAR) VAR,
enum MetaSyntacticVariable{
    SOME_ENUM(MAKE_ENUM)
};

#define MAKE_STRINGS(VAR) #VAR,
const char* const MetaSyntacticVariableNames[] = {
    SOME_ENUM(MAKE_STRINGS)
};
PrisonerOfPain_314860

What I tend to do is create a C array with the names in the same order and position as the enum values.

eg.

enum colours { red, green, blue };
const char *colour_names[] = { "red", "green", "blue" };

then you can use the array in places where you want a human-readable value, eg

colours mycolour = red;
cout << "the colour is" << colour_names[mycolour];

You could experiment a little with the stringizing operator (see # in your preprocessor reference) that will do what you want, in some circumstances- eg:

#define printword(XX) cout << #XX;
printword(red);

will print "red" to stdout. Unfortunately it won't work for a variable (as you'll get the variable name printed out)

user_137440

QT is able to pull that of (thanks to the meta object compiler):

QNetworkReply::NetworkError error;

error = fetchStuff();

if (error != QNetworkReply::NoError) {

    QString errorValue;

    QMetaObject meta = QNetworkReply::staticMetaObject;

    for (int i=0; i < meta.enumeratorCount(); ++i) {

        QMetaEnum m = meta.enumerator(i);

        if (m.name() == QLatin1String("NetworkError")) {

            errorValue = QLatin1String(m.valueToKey(error));

            break;

        }

    }

    QMessageBox box(QMessageBox::Information, "Failed to fetch",

                "Fetching stuff failed with error '%1`").arg(errorValue),

                QMessageBox::Ok);

    box.exec();

    return 1;

}

In Qt every class that has the Q_OBJECT macro will automatically have a static member "staticMetaObject" of the type QMetaObject. You can then find all sorts of cool things like the properties, signals, slots and indeed enums.

Source

user_141140

Interesting to see the number of ways. here's one i used a long time ago:

in file myenummap.h:

#include <map>
#include <string>
enum test{ one, two, three, five=5, six, seven };
struct mymap : std::map<unsigned int, std::string>
{
  mymap()
  {
    this->operator[]( one ) = "ONE";
    this->operator[]( two ) = "TWO";
    this->operator[]( three ) = "THREE";
    this->operator[]( five ) = "FIVE";
    this->operator[]( six ) = "SIX";
    this->operator[]( seven ) = "SEVEN";
  };
  ~mymap(){};
};

in main.cpp

#include "myenummap.h"

...
mymap nummap;
std::cout<< nummap[ one ] << std::endl;

Its not const, but its convenient.

Here's another way that uses C++11 features. This is const, doesn't inherit an STL container and is a little tidier:

#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>

//These stay together and must be modified together
enum test{ one, two, three, five=5, six, seven };
std::string enum_to_str(test const& e)
{
    typedef std::pair<int,std::string> mapping;
    auto m = [](test const& e,std::string const& s){return mapping(static_cast<int>(e),s);}; 
    std::vector<mapping> const nummap = 
    { 
        m(one,"one"), 
        m(two,"two"), 
        m(three,"three"),
        m(five,"five"),
        m(six,"six"),
        m(seven,"seven"),
    };
    for(auto i  : nummap)
    {
        if(i.first==static_cast<int>(e))
        {
            return i.second;
        }
    }
    return "";
}

int main()
{
//  std::cout<< enum_to_str( 46 ) << std::endl; //compilation will fail
    std::cout<< "Invalid enum to string : [" << enum_to_str( test(46) ) << "]"<<std::endl; //returns an empty string
    std::cout<< "Enumval five to string : ["<< enum_to_str( five ) << "] "<< std::endl; //works
    return 0;
}
user_137600

Suma's macro solution is nice. You don't need to have two different macro's, though. C++ wil happily include a header twice. Just leave out the include guard.

So you'd have an foobar.h defining just

ENUM(Foo, 1)
ENUM(Bar, 2)

and you would include it like this:

#define ENUMFACTORY_ARGUMENT "foobar.h"
#include "enumfactory.h"

enumfactory.h will do 2 #include ENUMFACTORY_ARGUMENTs. In the first round, it expands ENUM like Suma's DECLARE_ENUM; in the second round ENUM works like DEFINE_ENUM.

You can include enumfactory.h multiple times, too, as long as you pass in different #define's for ENUMFACTORY_ARGUMENT

MSalters_154160

Note that your conversion function should ideally be returning a const char *.

If you can afford to put your enums in their separate header files, you could perhaps do something like this with macros (oh, this will be ugly):

#include "enum_def.h"
#include "colour.h"
#include "enum_conv.h"
#include "colour.h"

Where enum_def.h has:

#undef ENUM_START
#undef ENUM_ADD
#undef ENUM_END
#define ENUM_START(NAME) enum NAME {
#define ENUM_ADD(NAME, VALUE) NAME = VALUE,
#define ENUM_END };

And enum_conv.h has:

#undef ENUM_START
#undef ENUM_ADD
#undef ENUM_END
#define ENUM_START(NAME) const char *##NAME##_to_string(NAME val) { switch (val) {
#define ENUM_ADD(NAME, VALUE) case NAME: return #NAME;
#define ENUM_END default: return "Invalid value"; } }

And finally, colour.h has:

ENUM_START(colour)
ENUM_ADD(red,   0xff0000)
ENUM_ADD(green, 0x00ff00)
ENUM_ADD(blue,  0x0000ff)
ENUM_END

And you can use the conversion function as:

printf("%s", colour_to_string(colour::red));

This is ugly, but it's the only way (at the preprocessor level) that lets you define your enum just in a single place in your code. Your code is therefore not prone to errors due to modifications to the enum. Your enum definition and the conversion function will always be in sync. However, I repeat, this is ugly :)

Ates_Goral_235010

Another answer: in some contexts, it makes sense to define your enumeration in a non-code format, like a CSV, YAML, or XML file, and then generate both the C++ enumeration code and the to-string code from the definition. This approach may or may not be practical in your application, but it's something to keep in mind.

user_204870

Adding even more simplicity of use to Jasper Bekkers' fantastic answer:

Set up once:

#define MAKE_ENUM(VAR) VAR,
#define MAKE_STRINGS(VAR) #VAR,
#define MAKE_ENUM_AND_STRINGS(source, enumName, enumStringName) \
    enum enumName { \
    source(MAKE_ENUM) \
    };\
const char* const enumStringName[] = { \
    source(MAKE_STRINGS) \
    };

Then, for usage:

#define SOME_ENUM(DO) \
    DO(Foo) \
    DO(Bar) \
    DO(Baz)
...
MAKE_ENUM_AND_STRINGS(SOME_ENUM, someEnum, someEnumNames)
user_56695290

I do this with separate side-by-side enum wrapper classes which are generated with macros. There are several advantages:

  • Can generate them for enums I don't define (eg: OS platform header enums)
  • Can incorporate range checking into the wrapper class
  • Can do "smarter" formatting with bit field enums

The downside, of course, is that I need to duplicate the enum values in the formatter classes, and I don't have any script to generate them. Other than that, though, it seems to work pretty well.

Here's an example of an enum from my codebase, sans all the framework code which implements the macros and templates, but you can get the idea:

enum EHelpLocation
{
    HELP_LOCATION_UNKNOWN   = 0, 
    HELP_LOCAL_FILE         = 1, 
    HELP_HTML_ONLINE        = 2, 
};
class CEnumFormatter_EHelpLocation : public CEnumDefaultFormatter< EHelpLocation >
{
public:
    static inline CString FormatEnum( EHelpLocation eValue )
    {
        switch ( eValue )
        {
            ON_CASE_VALUE_RETURN_STRING_OF_VALUE( HELP_LOCATION_UNKNOWN );
            ON_CASE_VALUE_RETURN_STRING_OF_VALUE( HELP_LOCAL_FILE );
            ON_CASE_VALUE_RETURN_STRING_OF_VALUE( HELP_HTML_ONLINE );
        default:
            return FormatAsNumber( eValue );
        }
    }
};
DECLARE_RANGE_CHECK_CLASS( EHelpLocation, CRangeInfoSequential< HELP_HTML_ONLINE > );
typedef ESmartEnum< EHelpLocation, HELP_LOCATION_UNKNOWN, CEnumFormatter_EHelpLocation, CRangeInfo_EHelpLocation > SEHelpLocation;

The idea then is instead of using EHelpLocation, you use SEHelpLocation; everything works the same, but you get range checking and a 'Format()' method on the enum variable itself. If you need to format a stand-alone value, you can use CEnumFormatter_EHelpLocation::FormatEnum(...).

Hope this is helpful. I realize this also doesn't address the original question about a script to actually generate the other class, but I hope the structure helps someone trying to solve the same problem, or write such a script.

user_262400

You could use a reflection library, like Ponder. You register the enums and then you can convert them back and forth with the API.

enum class MyEnum
{
    Zero = 0,
    One  = 1,
    Two  = 2
};

ponder::Enum::declare<MyEnum>()
    .value("Zero", MyEnum::Zero)
    .value("One",  MyEnum::One)
    .value("Two",  MyEnum::Two);

ponder::EnumObject zero(MyEnum::Zero);

zero.name(); // -> "Zero"
user_32330

A little late to the party here but I really like this pattern because it saves you from copy-pasta errors and will flat out not compile if the enum doesn't get mapped to a string. It also has the advantage of being very constexpr friendly so it inlines extremely well. It also requires no intermediate classes, switch statements, or runtime values.

// Create a mapping between the enum value and the string
#define MY_ENUM_LIST(DECLARE) \
DECLARE(foo, "This is a foo!") \
DECLARE(bar, "This is a bar!") \
DECLARE(bam, "This is a bam!")

// Define the enum officially
enum class MyEnum {
#define ENUM_ENTRY(NAME, TEXT) NAME, // TEXT expressly not used here
    MY_ENUM_LIST(ENUM_ENTRY)
#undef ENUM_ENTRY // Always undef as a good citizen ;)
};

// Create a template function that would fail to compile if called
template <MyEnum KEY> constexpr const char* MyEnumText() {}

// Specialize that bad function with versions that map the enum value to the string declared above
#define ENUM_FUNC(NAME, TEXT) template <> constexpr const char* MyEnumText<MyEnum::NAME>() { return TEXT; }
MY_ENUM_LIST(ENUM_FUNC)
#undef ENUM_FUNC

The way you use it is pretty straight forward. If you're always hardcoding the enum value at the site that you need the string, you simply call the specialized version of MyEnumText:

const auto text{::MyEnumText<MyEnum::foo>()}; // inlines beautifully

If you need to handle dynamic enum values, you can add this additional helper:

constexpr const char* MyEnumText(MyEnum key) {
    switch (key) {
#define ENUM_CASE(NAME, TEXT) case MyEnum::NAME: return MyEnumText<MyEnum::NAME>();
        MY_ENUM_LIST(ENUM_CASE)
#undef ENUM_CASE
    }
    return nullptr;
}

Which is invoked similarly to the template specialization:

const auto text{::MyEnumText(MyEnum::foo)}; // inlines beautifully

or

const MyEnum e{GetTheEnumValue()};
const auto text{::MyEnumText(e)};
user_13250840

A problem with answer 0 is that the enum binary values do not necessarily start at 0 and are not necessarily contiguous.

When I need this, I usually:

  • pull the enum definition into my source
  • edit it to get just the names
  • do a macro to change the name to the case clause in the question, though typically on one line: case foo: return "foo";
  • add the switch, default and other syntax to make it legal
user_278980

The following ruby script attempts to parse the headers and builts the required sources alongside the original headers.

#! /usr/bin/env ruby

# Let's "parse" the headers
# Note that using a regular expression is rather fragile
# and may break on some inputs

GLOBS = [
  "toto/*.h",
  "tutu/*.h",
  "tutu/*.hxx"
]

enums = {}
GLOBS.each { |glob|
  Dir[glob].each { |header|
    enums[header] = File.open(header, 'rb') { |f|
      f.read
    }.scan(/enum\s+(\w+)\s+\{\s*([^}]+?)\s*\}/m).collect { |enum_name, enum_key_and_values|
      [
        enum_name, enum_key_and_values.split(/\s*,\s*/).collect { |enum_key_and_value|
          enum_key_and_value.split(/\s*=\s*/).first
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}


# Now we build a .h and .cpp alongside the parsed headers
# using the template engine provided with ruby
require 'erb'

template_h = ERB.new <<-EOS
#ifndef <%= enum_name %>_to_string_h_
#define <%= enum_name %>_to_string_h_ 1

#include "<%= header %>"
char* enum_to_string(<%= enum_name %> e);

#endif
EOS

template_cpp = ERB.new <<-EOS
#include "<%= enum_name %>_to_string.h"

char* enum_to_string(<%= enum_name %> e)
{
  switch (e)
  {<% enum_keys.each do |enum_key| %>
    case <%= enum_key %>: return "<%= enum_key %>";<% end %>
    default: return "INVALID <%= enum_name %> VALUE";
  }
}
EOS

enums.each { |header, enum_name_and_keys|
  enum_name_and_keys.each { |enum_name, enum_keys|
    File.open("#{File.dirname(header)}/#{enum_name}_to_string.h", 'wb') { |built_h|
      built_h.write(template_h.result(binding))
    }

    File.open("#{File.dirname(header)}/#{enum_name}_to_string.cpp", 'wb') { |built_cpp|
      built_cpp.write(template_cpp.result(binding))
    }
  }
}

Using regular expressions makes this "parser" quite fragile, it may not be able to handle your specific headers gracefully.

Let's say you have a header toto/a.h, containing definitions for enums MyEnum and MyEnum2. The script will build:

toto/MyEnum_to_string.h
toto/MyEnum_to_string.cpp
toto/MyEnum2_to_string.h
toto/MyEnum2_to_string.cpp

More robust solutions would be:

  • Build all sources defining enums and their operations from another source. This means you'll define your enums in a XML/YML/whatever file which is much easier to parse than C/C++.
  • Use a real compiler such as suggested by Avdi.
  • Use preprocessor macros with or without templates.
user_118920

That's pretty much the only way it can be done (an array of string could work also).

The problem is, once a C program is compiled, the binary value of the enum is all that is used, and the name is gone.

user_127250

I came across this question when I was looking for a solution to my own problem for printing the "words" of the enumeration in C++. I came back to provide a simple solution which answers the presented question as worded. All that's required is to 'mirror' the enum list with a vector.

enum class genre { Fiction, NonFiction, Periodical, Biography, Children };

vector<string>genre_tbl { "Fiction", "NonFiction", "Periodical", "Biography", "Children" };

Because the enum as typed above will do the following by default;

Fiction = 0
NonFiction = 1
Periodical = 2
Biography = 3
Children = 4

This matches the vector positions which makes enum to string conversion pretty straight forward.

string s1 = genre_tbl[int(genre::fiction)];

For my problem I created a user defined class called Book with a member called Gen of type genre. The program needed to be able to print the genre as the word.

class book {...};
ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, genre g) { return os << genre_tbl[int(g)]; }

book b1;
b1.Gen = genre(0)
cout << b1.Gen;

For which "Fiction" will print to screen in this case.

user_93441660

This question is a duplicate of,

However, in none of the questions, I could find good answers.

After delving into the topic, I found two great open source solutions:

wise_enum

  • Standalone smart enum library for C++11/14/17. It supports all of the standard functionality that you would expect from a smart enum class in C++.
  • Limitations: requires at least C++11.

Better Enums

  • Reflective compile-time enum library with clean syntax, in a single header file, and without dependencies.
  • Limitations: based on macros, can't be used inside a class.

Note: I am repeating the recommendation here. This question has a lot of traffic/views and really requires listing the solutions above.

user_6343550
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