Have a map with keys consisting of different types in C++

Question

I currently am using a map in C++ and have a couple of values that are ints and booleans, though the majority of them are strings. I know in Java I could do something like this:

Answer 1

You can have several different maps, and hide the lookup in overloaded functions:

std::map           map_int;
std::map   map_string;

Object& lookup(int Key)
{ return map_int[Key]; }

Object& lookup(std::string Key)
{ return map_string[Key]; }

Now all your lookups kan be done with lookup(key).