Is there a better way to get the value of a preprocessor variable?

[JUAN DENT]

Why does this work and why do we need 2 macros?

#define STR_HELPER(x)		#x
#define STR(x)				STR_HELPER(x)

#define AAA 500
#pragma message "content of AAA = " STR(AAA)   // prints content of AAA = 500
#pragma message "AAA = " STR_HELPER(AAA)       // prints AAA = AAA 

Why this "recursive call"?

Thanks,
Juan

[mbozzi]

Because macro arguments aren't expanded when they are "stringified", but they are (fully) expanded when they're used as an argument to another macro, per the argument prescan rules.

Edit:
To answer the title question, no, there is no better way -- that approach is idiomatic, and you must use at least 2 macros no matter what you do.