I have a problem that I would like to solve in the most generic non-intrusive way possible (such as boost serialization). What I want is to access class members both via it's initially designed accessors but also via a "const char *" key. In addition, I want to pass list of key's (via a vector of const char * or a single delimited multikey char *) to get nested member access. For example: ... // these should be equivalent Point p; int val; val = p.x; val = p.getX(); p.getMemberValue("x", val); // there also Rectangle r; int val; Point pVal; r.getMemberValue("corner:x", val); r.getMemberValue("corner", pVal); I thought about having a templated function similar to the serialize() function called 'getMemberValue()', where each 'if' block below could be wrapped into a MACRO taking just the member name. template< class T > bool getMemberValue(const char *key, T & value) { if(!strcmp(key, "member")) { value = this->member; return true; } return false; } This appears to work fine for one level deep but if I want the behavior such as the above rectangle example, I run into trouble. I end up with a function implementation like this for the 'Rectangle' class template< Point > bool getMemberValue(const char *key, Point & value) { if(!strcmp(key, "corner")) { value = this->corner; // Point return true; } if(!strcmp(key, "width")) { value = this->width; // int return true; } if(!strcmp(key, "height")) { value = this->height; // int return true; } return false; } This fails because it ends up trying to set an integer value to a Point variable. Anybody have any suggestions? Joe