What is visual studio 2010 analog for `g++ -E file.cxx`?

Question

Is there any, can we see results in IDE?

So I try code sample that uses boost preprocessor and is shown here (!warning - russian):

#include <boost/preprocessor.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <map>
#include <vector>

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT(name, seq) DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_I(name, seq)

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_I(name, seq)                   \
struct name {                                          \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_FIELDS(seq)                   \
    \
    template <typename functor>                          \
    void apply(Functor functor) {                        \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_APPLY_FIELDS(functor, seq)  \
    }                                                    \
};

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_EXTRACT_TYPE(tuple)   \
    BOOST_PP_TUPLE_ELEM(2, 0, tuple)

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_EXTRACT_NAME(tuple)   \
    BOOST_PP_TUPLE_ELEM(2, 1, tuple)

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_FIELDS(seq)              \
    BOOST_PP_SEQ_FOR_EACH(                                \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_FIELDS_OP, ~, seq)

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_FIELDS_OP(z, data, el)   \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_EXTRACT_TYPE(el)                    \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_EXTRACT_NAME(el);

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_APPLY_FIELDS(ft, seq)    \
    BOOST_PP_SEQ_FOR_EACH(                                \
    DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_APPLY_FIELDS_OP, ft, seq)

#define DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_ENUM_APPLY_FIELDS_OP(z, ft, el) \
    ft(DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT_EXTRACT_NAME(el));

//this
DEFINE_OUR_STRUCT(first_struct,
    ((int               , id))
    ((std::vector<char> , data))
    )
// shall turn into 
/*
struct first_struct {
    int                   id;
    std::vector<char>     data;

    template <typename Functor>
    void apply(Functor functor) {
        functor(id);
        functor(data);
    }
};
*/
// ...And probably shall not give as many errors as it does...

    int main()
{
    return 0;
}

My IDE is VS2010 (ultimate), I wonder how to see my code as IDE sees it - meanig with my define turned into code. Can it be done inside IDE, can it be done from VS consol?

Answer 1

You can run the Visual Studio compiler from the commandline with CL /E to do the equivalent of gcc's -E (i.e. preprocessed). I'm not aware of a way to do this from the IDE itself.

As @MooingDuck says, you can output preprocessed source to a configurable file which you can view from the IDE although you can't get the preprocessed output to spool directly to an IDE output window AFAIK.