Quick C preprocessor format question

Question

Really 2 questions. I want to use the same macro name to generate a list of fields, a list of method declarations and the code for the needed methods. What I am not sure about is (1) how to enclose a parameter to the macro so it will appear in a string in one definition, and (2) as part of a concatenated method name.
My example#define name(par1,par2) -(void)par1:(int)par2;
name(Name,myPoint)Gives me:-(void)Name:myPoint;No problem. Simple.
For (1) will:#define name(par1,par2) NSString par1 = @"par2";
name(myName,myPoint)give meNSString myName = @"myPoint";
or
NSString Name = @"par2";
From my understanding I think that will do what I want and give me @"myPoint".
For (2) What I want is:#define name(par1,par2) -(void)makeSome'par1:(int)par2;
name(Name,myPoint)and get
-(void)makeSomeName:(int)myPoint;
I haven't been defining macros in C for a long long time, and I know this is possible, just not what syntax to use to make it work. I used the quote character to show concatenation, which some other macro processors I have used use. Someone with experience here, point me to a reference on C preprocessor macros formatting would be good.
A correct example on how to define the 2nd macro would also help
There's really not much in my K&R C Programming language, circa 1978 2nd printing...

Answer 1

There's a section on the preprocessor in the book Beginning Mac OS X Programming by Wrox, but it's all based around C, not Objective-C like the code in your examples, so I don't know if that would be helpful to you or not.
I'm not a very experienced programmer, so I was hesitant to even reply, and I'll warn you now that I don't think this post will be of any help to you, but since you haven't gotten any other replies yet, I figured I'd try. Hopefully someone else around here will come along and actually help you.
Anyways, let's say you had two functions defined in your program -- their declarations are:
void PrintAddresses( );
void PrintPhoneNumbers( );
you could ideally use a macro as a way of calling the desired function. In C, the basic syntax for writing a macro like the one you wrote often uses the ternary operator. I don't know enough about Objective-C to know how that would fit in, but in C it would be simple enough:
#define Macro(param1, param2) (condition ? PrintAddresses : PrintPhoneNumbers)
the condition could be anything (param1 > param2 for example). Then, later, if you need to choose a method name based on the criteria passed to the macro, you would pass the appropriate arguments to the macro to get the ternary operator to return the desired value. The function call would be something like this:
Macro(arg1, arg2)( );
The compiler never sees the preprocessor directives. The preprocessor simply runs over your code before the compiler gets to it, replacing any macros with the values specified for them. So, if the arguments passed to the macro resulted in the condition in the ternary operator in the #define directive to be true, then the words "Macro(arg1, arg2)" would be replaced with "PrintAddresses" and your function call would now look like "PrintAddresses( );" and thus the function PrintAddresses( ) would be called. If the arguments passed to the macro resulted in the condition being false, then the words "Macro(arg1, arg2)" would be replaced with "PrintPhoneNumbers" and your function call would now look like "PrintPhoneNumbers( );" and thus the function PrintPhoneNumbers( ) would be called.
Note that if you take out the word "Print" from the macro values and try to define the macro like this:
#define Macro(param1, param2) (condition ? Addresses : PhoneNumbers)
and call the function like this:
PrintMacro(arg1,arg2)();
it will not work like this (or at least I could not get it to work like this) -- I don't know why.
Anyways, you probably already knew everything I just wrote, in which case maybe it can help someone else down the line searching through this thread. Or maybe I should just stick to asking questions on this forum. Anyways, hope the post wasn't a complete waste of time. Best of luck in solving your problem.
Message was edited by: Tron55555