C/C++ source file after preprocessing

Question

Let's say I have a source file with many preprocessor directives . Is it possible to see how it looks after the preprocessor is done with it ?

Answer 1

Most compilers have an option to just run the preprocessor. e.g., gcc provides -E:

   -E  Stop after the preprocessing stage; do not run the compiler proper.  
       The output is in the form of preprocessed source code, which is sent
       to the standard output.

So you can just run:

gcc -E foo.c

If you can't find such an option, you can also just find the C preprocessor on your machine. It's usually called cpp and is probably already in your path. Invoke it like this:

cpp foo.c

If there are headers you need to include from other directories , you can pass -I/path/to/include/dir to either of these, just as you would with a regular compile.

For Windows, I'll leave it to other posters to provide answers as I'm no expert there.

Answer 2

In Visual Studio you can compile a file (or project) with /P.

Answer 3

try cl /EP if you are using MS Cpp compiler.

Answer 4

Right-click on the file on the Solution Explorer, goto Properties. Under Configuration Properties->C/C++->Preprocessor, "Generate Preprocessed File" is what you are looking for.

Answer 5

You typically need to do some postprocessing on the output of the preprocessor, otherwise all the macros just expand to one liners, which is hard to read and debug. For C code, something like the following would suffice:

gcc -E code.c | sed '/^\#/d' | indent -st -i2 > code-x.c

For C++ code, it's actually a lot harder. For GCC/g++, I found this perl script useful.

Answer 6

cl.exe, the command line interface to Microsoft Visual C++, has three different options for outputting the preprocessed file (hence the inconsistency in the previous responses about Visual C++):

• /E: preprocess to stdout (similar to GCC's -E option)
• /P: preprocess to file
• /EP: preprocess to stdout without #line directives