Number of elements in an enum

Question

In C, is there a nice way to track the number of elements in an enum? I\'ve seen

enum blah {
    FIRST,
    SECOND,
    THIRD,
    LAST
};

Answer 1

#include <stdio.h>

// M_CONC and M_CONC_ come from https://stackoverflow.com/a/14804003/7067195
#define M_CONC(A, B) M_CONC_(A, B)
#define M_CONC_(A, B) A##B

#define enum_count_suffix _count
#define count(tag) M_CONC(tag, enum_count_suffix)
#define countable_enum(tag, ...) \
  enum tag {__VA_ARGS__}; \
  const size_t count(tag) = sizeof((int []) {__VA_ARGS__}) / sizeof(int)

// The following declares an enum with tag `color` and 3 constants: `red`,
// `green`, and `blue`.
countable_enum(color, red, green, blue);

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  // The following prints 3, as expected.
  printf("number of elements in enum: %d\n", count(color));
}

Answer 2

Old question, I know. This is for the googlers with the same question.

You could use X-Macros

Example:

//The values are defined via a map which calls a given macro which is defined later
#define ENUM_MAP(X) \
      X(VALA, 0)    \
      X(VALB, 10)   \
      X(VALC, 20)

//Using the map for the enum decl
#define X(n, v) [n] = v,
typedef enum val_list {
    ENUM_MAP(X) //results in [VALA] = 0, etc...
} val_list;
#undef X

//For the count of values
#define X(n, v) + 1
int val_list_count = 0 + ENUM_MAP(X); //evaluates to 0 + 1 + 1 + 1
#undef X

This is also transparent to an IDE, so auto-completes will work fine (as its all done in the pre-processor).