A typical idiom in C is to initialize map data structure statically. For example: static struct name_age { const char* name; int age; } name_age_map[] = { {"Will", 50}, {"James", 32}, }; static const struct name_age* map_begin = ...; static const struct name_age* map_end = ...; void foo() { const struct name_age* na = lookup_by_name(map_begin, map_end, "James"); if (na != map_end) { /* process */ } } This is very convenient when one knows that the contents of the map will never change at runtime. However, writing the map data structures and lookup code gets old quick. I have not found an existing way nicely mirror this style in C++. I have being playing around with something similar in spirit to boost::array. Similar in that it can be initialized statically using an initialization list relying on a POD class for the implementation. So the above example would look something like: static static_map<const char*, int, 2> name_age_map = { "Will", 50, "James", 32, }; void foo() { static_map<const char*, int, 3>::iterator it = name_age_map.find("James"); if (it != name_age_map.end()) { // process } } Static_map::find would just be a simple linear search. However, there could be another type, say sorted_static_map, that relies on the keys in the initialization list to be sorted by the user. Then a binary search could be used for sorted_static_map::find. Does anyone else have a need for such a beast? --Meador