https://blog.nelhage.com/2010/07/implementing-an-edsl-in-cpp/Implementing a declarative mini-language in the C preprocessorLast time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time, I want to talk about the tricks I used to implement a declarative minilanguage using the C preprocessor (and some GCC extensions).
The Problem We want to write some toplevel declarations that look like:
#define SUITE_NAME example BEGIN_SUITE("Example test suite"); #define TEST_CASE core BEGIN_TEST_CASE("Core tests"); … and so on, and somehow translate them into code that does the equivalent of:2010-07-04T15:54:55Zhttps://blog.nelhage.com/post/Nelson ElhageRecent content in Posts on Made of BugsPosts on Made of Bugs2026-09-13T04:37:09Zrss20false60Nelson Elhagenelson-elhage0"5b2ae9eec2e293572f6ae5a000bd0161-ssl-df"200utf-8