Ah yes, using a typedef would work too, nice. It for sure not quite the same as C++ templates, but if you can tolerate crazy things you can do a lot with the p

Ah yes, using a typedef would work too, nice. It for sure not quite the same as C++ templates, but if you can tolerate crazy things you can do a lot with the preprocessor. See http://www.boost.org/libs/preprocessor/ http://www.boost.org/libs/preprocessor/ (supports both C++ and C). If you have foo_template.h: #define FOO_T CONCAT(CONCAT(foo_,X),_t) struct FOO_T { /* ... */ }; and bar_template.h: #define X Y/2 #include "foo_template.h" #define BAT_T CONCAT(CONCAT(bar_,Y),_t) struct BAR_T { FOO_T foo; }; It might almost work, but you'd need to pull out some more tricks I'm sure. Maybe BOOST_PP_DIV(Y,2) would help. In practice I'd prefer something sane. :)