Programmatic way to get variable name in C?

In C, variable names exist during the compile step (and the link step, if the variable is global), but are not available at runtime. You must choose a solution that involves a literal string indicating the variable name.

Shorter way:

#define GET_VARIABLE_NAME(Variable) (#Variable)

test:

#include <string>
class MyClass {};


int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
    int foo = 0;

    std::string var_name1 = GET_VARIABLE_NAME(foo);
     char* var_name2 = GET_VARIABLE_NAME(foo);
     char* var_name3 = GET_VARIABLE_NAME(MyClass);


    return 0;
}

You could try something like this:

#define DUMP(varname) fprintf(stderr, "%s = %x", #varname, varname);

I used to use this header I wrote, when I was new to C, it might contain some useful ideas. For example this would allow you to print a C value and provide the format specifier in one (as well as some additional information):

#define TRACE(fmt, var) \
        (error_at_line(0, 0, __FILE__, __LINE__, "%s : " fmt, #var, var))

If you're using C++, you could use the type of the passed value and output it appropriately. I can provide a much more lucrative example for how to "pretty print" variable values if this is the case.