What is the expression language used by the Resource Compiler for non-preprocessor expressions?

I noted some time ago that the Resource Compiler’s preprocessor is not the same as the C preprocessor: Although it supports the same expression language, it does not support directives like #pragma.

There is a second expression language used by the Resource Compiler, and that’s the one used to define resources. Surprisingly, this expression language is different from the preprocessor expression language.

For one thing, it has a much reduced set of operators, and no operator precedence. All binary operators are left-associative, and parentheses can be used for grouping.

+a	Unary plus
-a	Unary minus
~a	Unary bitwise negation
a + b	Binary addition
a - b	Binary subtraction
a | b	Binary bitwise OR
a & b	Binary bitwise AND
a | NOT b	Binary bit clear (a & ~b)
0xdddd	Hexadecimal constant
0odddd	Octal constant
dddd	Decimal constant

The NOT operator looks weird, but the idea is that you can write something like

WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | NOT WS_MINIMIZEBOX

The WS_OVERLAPPED­WINDOW style is a composite style:

#define WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW (WS_OVERLAPPED     | \
                             WS_CAPTION        | \
                             WS_SYSMENU        | \
                             WS_THICKFRAME     | \
                             WS_MINIMIZEBOX    | \
                             WS_MAXIMIZEBOX)

Appending a | NOT WS_MINIMIZEBOX means that you want all of the styles that come with WS_OVERLAPPED­WINDOW except for WS_MINIMIZE­BOX.

Note that all operators have equal precedence, so 1 | 1 - 1 parses as (1 | 1) - 1, which is 0. On the other hand, in C, the - operator has higher precedence than |, so the C expression 1 | 1 - 1 parses as 1 | (1 - 1), which is 1.

Since the preprocessor directives follow C expression rules, you can get into an odd situation where the same expression comes out to a difference value depending on the context in which you use it:

#if 1 | 1 - 1
DLG_MYDIALOG DIALOG 1 | 1 - 1, 0, 42, 42
BEGIN
END
#endif

The 1 | 1 - 1 in the #if statement is a preprocessor directive, and it evaluates to 1, so the #if condition is truthy, and the contents generate a dialog resource. On the other hand, when the compiler sees the 1 | 1 - 1 in the DIALOG statement, it is evaluated as a resource constant, which produces zero.

Note also that the resource expression language lacks many operators, most notably multiplication.

Another oddity is that the resource expression language uses 0o as the octal prefix rather than a simple 0 like in C. This means that 010 evaluates to 8 when used in a preprocessor expression, but it evaluates to 10 when used in a resource expression. This is particularly troublesome if you put the definition in a header file that is shared with C/C++ code:

// resource.h
#define DLG_AWESOME 010

// contoso.rc
#include "resource.h"

DLG_AWESOME DIALOG ...

// contoso.cpp
#include "resource.h"

DialogBox(instance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(DLG_AWESOME), ...);

Even though they are both using DLG_AWESOME, the resource compiler sees it as a resource expression, and the 010 is the decimal constant 10. On the other hand, the C++ compiler sees it as as a C++ expression, and the 010 is an octal constant which evaluates to 8.

Moral of the story: Don’t use leading zeroes.

There’s another quirk of the resource compiler expression language, and that’s the concept of the “initial value”.

In many cases, the value you are specifying comes with an initial value, and the expression you provide is implicitly treated as combining with the initial value as if by logical “or” (|). In other words, if you write some expression e, the Resource Compiler acts as if you had actually written

initial | e

Note the absence of parentheses around the e.

Here is the table of initial values for various control types:

Control	Underlying control	With initial style
PUSHBUTTON	Button	BS_PUSHBUTTON	| WS_TABSTOP
DEFPUSHBUTTON	Button	BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON	| WS_TABSTOP
CHECKBOX	Button	BS_CHECKBOX	| WS_TABSTOP
AUTOCHECKBOX	Button	BS_AUTOCHECKBOX	| WS_TABSTOP
STATE3	Button	BS_3STATE	| WS_TABSTOP
AUTO3STATE	Button	BS_AUTO3STATE	| WS_TABSTOP
RADIOBUTTON	Button	BS_RADIOBUTTON
AUTORADIOBUTTON	Button	BS_AUTORADIOBUTTON
GROUPBOX	Button	BS_GROUPBOX
PUSHBOX	Button	BS_PUSHBOX	| WS_TABSTOP
LTEXT	Static	SS_LEFT	| WS_GROUP
RTEXT	Static	SS_RIGHT	| WS_GROUP
CTEXT	Static	SS_CENTER	| WS_GROUP
ICON	Static	SS_ICON
EDITTEXT	Edit	ES_LEFT | WS_BORDER	| WS_TABSTOP
LISTBOX	ListBox	LBS_NOTIFY | WS_BORDER

These initial styles are documented in the Resource Compiler documentation. For each control, look at the section of the documentation that says “If you do not specify a style, the default style is…” That default style is the value that your custom style is combined with.

It didn’t fit in the above table, but dialogs themselves have an initial style of WS_CAPTION if you gave the dialog a CAPTION.

The “initial value” trick makes the NOT behavior a little more comprehensible, because it lets you write things like

    LTEXT "Hello", -1, 4, 80, 160, 10, NOT WS_GROUP | SS_SUNKEN

The NOT WS_GROUP combines with the initial value to produce a net result of

SS_LEFT | WS_GROUP | NOT WS_GROUP | SS_SUNKEN

Translating this into C, you get

((SS_LEFT | WS_GROUP) & ~WS_GROUP) | SS_SUNKEN

which is SS_LEFT | SS_SUNKEN. The NOT WS_GROUP removes the WS_GROUP style that came by default with the LTEXT statement.

Bonus chatter: Why are there two different expression languages?

The resource language is designed for use in resource statements. The NOT syntax, in particular, is handy for removing styles from the initial styles that come with certain controls.

The preprocessor language is designed for use in preprocessor statements. And the preprocessor language matches the C programming language because preprocessor statements commonly occur in header files which are consumed by both the Resource Compiler and the C/C++ compiler. It would be a very difficult bug to track down if a #if statement in a header file evaluated differently depending on whether you included it from a C/C++ file or from a resource file.