Unstringize inside a Macro

Question

Inside a Macro, I can use the stringizing operator #:

#define STRINGIZE(name) #name

cout << STRINGIZE(SomeClass) << endl; // Prints "SomeClass"

Is it possible to do the opposite, unstringize inside a Macro? How?

For example:

#define RUN_FUNCTION(name) UNSTRINGIZE(name)();

void myFunction {
  cout << "Hello!" << endl;
}

RUN_FUNCTION("myFunction") // Prints "Hello!"

If not, is there a reason why?

Answer 1

No, it's not possible. The C++ preprocessor cannot break up tokens into smaller tokens in any way.

What exactly is it that you're trying to do? There's almost certainly a better way of doing it.

Answer 2

[Promoted from comment]
Preprocessing takes place before compilation, which is before runtime. You'd need reflection to do that without defining your own rules, which requires some form of metadata, and C++ doesn't have it.

I can't find where, but I recently saw somewhere (perhaps here, but according to Wikipedia, it's been postponed) that reflection could be coming to C++ sometime in the future, so there might be a prospect there.