passing identifier and type to macro - c

Question

I'm trying to pass an identifier and a type to a macro that should declare the variable
#define DECLARE_PARAM(TYPE, PARAM) \
TYPE PARAM; \
gboolean __exist_##PARAM = FALSE
...
DECLARE_PARAM(char[100], title);
but I'm getting compilation errors :
expected identifier or '(' before '[' token
DECLARE_PARAM(char[100], title);
^
EDIT
It works with simple types such char or int, is there a way I can pass an array type?
CONTEXT
I'm actually trying to make a variadic function that takes a string of parameters name separated by spaces "title color other" and then their values so it would be called like this :
create_window("color title", "blue", "My window");
so the function would give default values to the none specified argument.
I wrote this as a test, but now I need to put this boilerplate code into a macro like this
for example :
DEFAULT_PARAM(title, char[100], "My window");
here is the test I wrote
#define DECLARE_PARAM(TYPE, PARAM) \
TYPE PARAM; \
gboolean __exist_##PARAM = FALSE
GtkWidget *fenetre_creer(char *keys, ...)
{
va_list args;
DECLARE_PARAM(char[100], titre);
DECLARE_PARAM(char[100], icon);
DECLARE_PARAM(int, padding);
GList *argList = read_args(keys);
int nombreArguments = g_list_length(argList);
va_start(args, nombreArguments);
GList *iterator = argList;
while(iterator)
{
char *argument = iterator->data;
if(strcmp(argument, "titre"))
{
strcpy(titre, va_arg(args, char*));
_titre_param = TRUE;
}
else if(strcmp(argument, "icon"))
{
strcpy(icon, va_arg(args, char*));
_icon_param = TRUE;
}
else if (strcmp(argument, "padding"))
{
padding = va_arg(args, int);
_padding_param = TRUE;
}
iterator = iterator->next;
}
var_end();
if(!__exist_titre)
strcpy(titre, "Titre de la fenetre");
if(!__exist_padding)
padding = 10;
if(!__exist_icon)
strcpy(icon, "");
printf("titre : %s\n", titre);
printf("padding : %d\n", padding);
printf("icon : %s\n", icon);
}

Answer 1

As others have noted, char[100] foo is legal Java but not legal C or C++, at least in the dialects I've used.
I'm not guaranteeing it, but you could try:
typedef char Char100[100];
DECLARE_PARAM(Char100, titre);
I suspect that would work. HOWEVER, using macros to add syntax to the language is almost always a bad idea. You really aren't saving yourself that much work, and you're creating a not-quite-C program which will be harder for other C programmers to work with. Don't do it for trivial things like this, and if you must do it document it to death.
Especially since you can say the same thing more clearly as
typedef char Char100[100];
Char100 titre;
RESPONDING TO EDIT FOR "CONTEXT":
Default parameters is a very different question. For that, define wrapper functions which take a subset of the arguments and fill in the missing values before calling the general version. Or define the function to recognize a reserved value (null, or -1, or something else that won't otherwise occur) as a request to use the default value for that parameter. Much cleaner than trying to warp the syntax of the language.