any macro-like construct/technique/trick?

[Paddy]

If you still must have something like the c preprocessor then unix has
m4 (and it seems there is a windows version
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/m4.htm).

The start of the doc reads:


GNU M4
******

GNU `m4' is an implementation of the traditional UNIX macro processor.
It is mostly SVR4 compatible, although it has some extensions (for
example, handling more than 9 positional parameters to macros).  `m4'
also has builtin functions for including files, running shell commands,
doing arithmetic, etc.  Autoconf needs GNU `m4' for generating
`configure' scripts, but not for running them.


- Paddy.