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by jstimpfle 2797 days ago
Re: 3), here's a clean and technically humble way that I typically use.

    enum {
        KEY_FOO,
        KEY_BAR,
        KEY_BLAH,
        NUM_KEYS,
    };

    struct KeyInfo {
        const char *name;
        int info1;
        float info2;
    };

    const static struct KeyInfo keyInfo[NUM_KEYS] = {
    #define MAKE(x, y, z) [x] = { #x, y, z }
        MAKE( KEY_FOO,   1,   1.0 ),
        MAKE( KEY_BAR,   7,   3.5 ),
        MAKE( KEY_BLAH, 42, 127.2 ),
    #undef MAKE
    };

    void print_key(int key)
    {
        printf("%d's name is %s\n", key, keyInfo[key].name);
    }
It's both low-tech and maintainable. It compiles super quick. If one doesn't like that one has to type KEY_FOO twice (in the enum and in the array definition), one can use X-macros or code generation. But personally I don't care.
2 comments

Yes, that's a nice approach. However, this approach requires you to list all your keys in advance (in the enum).

The `semi::static_map` does not require this.This is especially useful if you are writing library code: imagine you are programming a `getFont` method - you don't know with which constexpr keys your method will be called, so there is no way for you to list all these keys in an enum.

If you don't like pointlessly repeating occurrences of identifiers, you should hardly be favoring C++.

   class foo {
   public:
     foo();
     ~foo();
   };
 
   foo::foo() { }

   foo::~foo() { }
Ad nauseum.

Oh, but C++ can eliminate redundancy in this one cool case I'm thinking of!

C++ doesn't support designated initialisers.