In C++, you can minimize repetitive tasks using macros. Messages registeration or registering  classes to the reflection system are such cases. In case that the registration cannot be done in one part of the code, we have to write duplicate informations more times. So DRY(Don't Repeat
Yourself) principle is broken and you are liable to many sync problems.

I found a useful tip at Visual C++ team blog. Suppose you want an enumeration and associated description strings as follows.

enum Animal { dog, cat, fish, bird };

wchar_t* AnimalDiscription[] = { L"dog", L"cat", L"fish", L"bird" };

If you have 'animal.inc' file as follows:

MYENUM(dog)

MYENUM(cat)

MYENUM(fish)

MYENUM(bird)

You can write following codes.

enum Animal {

#define MYENUM(e) _##e,

#include "animal.inc"

#undef MYENUM

};

 

wchar_t* AnimalDescription[] = {

#define MYENUM(e) L"_" L#e,

#include "animal.inc"

#undef MYENUM

};

 

What a neat trick!...