I suppose static maps will make a lot of sense if you need to deal with it in template metaprogramming or even preprocessing... Otherwise, it's just another way of implementing a simple map. They make sense in other ways as well. For the scenario static_map is trying to solve you only want the map initialized once. I guess you could use boost.assign with a static object. Or you could right your own init code. For example: // namespace scope struct name_age_map { std::map<std::string, int> map; name_age_map() { this->map["Will"] = 28; this->map["Joe"] = 30; } }; static name_age_map my_map;

// class scope class foo { static name_age_map my_map; }; name_age_map foo::my_map; // function scope void bar() { static name_age_map my_map; } I have three gripes about this solution: 1. The scaffolding code is a pain to write over and over 2. It is not thread safe 3. You may not want to pay the runtime initialization cost if the map is huge . A static_map would solve all these problems. And possibly more? --Meador