How do i ToString() an enum in c++? [duplicate]

Answer 1

How about a little magic with macros:

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


// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/236129/how-to-split-a-string-in-c
std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string &text, char sep) {
    std::vector<std::string> tokens;
    int start = 0, end = 0;
    while ((end = text.find(sep, start)) != std::string::npos) {
        tokens.push_back(text.substr(start, end - start));
        start = end + 1;
    }
    tokens.push_back(text.substr(start));
    return tokens;
}

#define ENUM(name, ...)\
enum name \
{\
__VA_ARGS__\
};\
std::vector<std::string> name##Map = split(#__VA_ARGS__, ',');\
    std::string toString(const name v) { return name##Map.at(v);}


ENUM(Color, Red,Green,Blue)


int main(int c, char**v)
{
    std::cout << toString(Red) << toString(Blue);
    return 0;//a.exec();
}

Yes, I understand that this is ugly and you'd better not do do such things

Answer 2

You can store the names in an array of strings, indexed by the enum values.

enum Colours
{
    Red =0,
    Green=1,
    Blue=2
};

char* names[3] = {"Red", "Green", "Blue"};

Then you can print: "Invalid colour '" + names[colour] + "' selected."

But this approach may not be very useful if you do not define the enum values sequentially. In that case this approach will waste memory. Writing a function with a switch over the enum value would be useful, as Alexander Gessler has mentioned. Another alternative may be the map from STL.