Enum to string in C++11

Question

I realize this has been asked before more than once on SO but I couldn\'t find a question explicitly looking for a current solution to this issue with C++11, so here we go again

Answer 1

You can use macro to solve this problem:

#define MAKE_ENUM(name, ...) enum class name { __VA_ARGS__}; \
static std::vector Enum_##name##_init(){\
    const std::string content = #__VA_ARGS__; \
    std::vector str;\
    size_t len = content.length();\
    std::ostringstream temp;\
    for(size_t i = 0; i < len; i ++) {\
    if(isspace(content[i])) continue;\
    else if(content[i] == ',') {\
    str.push_back(temp.str());\
    temp.str(std::string());}\
    else temp<< content[i];}\
    str.push_back(temp.str());\
    return str;}\
static const std::vector Enum_##name##_str_vec = Enum_##name##_init();\
static std::string to_string(name val){\
    return Enum_##name##_str_vec[static_cast(val)];\
}\
static std::string print_all_##name##_enum(){\
    int count = 0;\
    std::string ans;\
    for(auto& item:Enum_##name##_str_vec)\
    ans += std::to_string(count++) + ':' + item + '\n';\
    return ans;\
}

As the static variable can only be initialized once, so the Enum_##name##_str_vec will use the Enum_##name##_init() function to initialize itself at first.

The sample code is as below:

MAKE_ENUM(Analysis_Time_Type,
                  UNKNOWN,
                  REAL_TIME, 
                  CLOSSING_TIME 
);

Then you can use below sentence to print an enum value:

to_string(Analysis_Time_Type::UNKNOWN)

And use below sentence to print all enum as string:

print_all_Analysis_Time_Type_enum()