How Can I read a file at preprocessing time

Question

I need to compile my code based on version number of the project i am working on. In short, i will read the version number from a file and enable or disable certain part of my code/.
How can i read the version number from a file at compile time in c/c++?.

I am trying to do something like this

static const unsigned int version =   
#include "version"
    ;

I am getting compiler error.

Answer 1

file.c

#include <stdio.h>
static const float version = 
#include "file.h"
;

int main()
{
 printf("Version is : %f\n", version);
}

file.h

37.11

basically works