"#include" a text file in a C program as a char[]

Question

Is there a way to include an entire text file as a string in a C program at compile-time?

something like:

• file.txt:

  This is
  a little
  text file
  

• main.c:

  #include <stdio.h>
  int main(void) {
     #blackmagicinclude("file.txt", content)
     /*
     equiv: char[] content = "This is\na little\ntext file";
     */
     printf("%s", content);
  }
  

obtaining a little program that prints on stdout "This is a little text file"

At the moment I used an hackish python script, but it's butt-ugly and limited to only one variable name, can you tell me another way to do it?

Answer 1

I'd suggest using (unix util)xxd for this. you can use it like so

$ echo hello world > a
$ xxd -i a

outputs:

unsigned char a[] = {
  0x68, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f, 0x20, 0x77, 0x6f, 0x72, 0x6c, 0x64, 0x0a
};
unsigned int a_len = 12;