Accessing Visual Studio macros from source code?

Question

Visual Studio has macros like `$(TargetDirectory)`, `$(OutputPath)` etc. In my source code, I want to specify a relative path for the loading of a file from a folder a few levels below the `TargetDirectory`. Currently I'm doing this: `mLayer = mEngine->AddLayer("D:\Projects\abc.osg");` and I want it to be something like `mLayer = mEngine->AddLayer(($TargetDirectory)+"..\..\abc.osg");` It's just a temporary requirement, so that I can give my code to a person for a small demo, and his TargetDirectory is differently aligned wrt my directories. Is there any way to make use of the Visual Studio macros in source code? (at least I know that System environment variables can be accessed)

Accepted Answer

Go to Project Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor -> Preprocessor Definitions and add the following:

```
TARGET_DIRECTORY=LR"($(TargetDir))"
```

This defines a wide string literal named TARGET_DIRECTORY that contains the contents of the $(TargetDir) macro. The important thing here is that this creates a C++ raw string that does not treat backslashes as escape characters. Paths contain backslashes. Using a regular string literal would be incorrect and would even give you compiler errors in some cases.

Important!

If you use a macro that may contain a closing parenthesis followed by double quotation marks )" you must use an additional delimiter, that cannot occur in the macro value, for example:

```
TARGET_DIRECTORY=LR"|($(TargetDir))|"
```

In the case of windows file system paths this is not necessary because paths cannot contain double quotation marks.

Accessing Visual Studio macros from source code?

Solution

Problem