[Solved] Array of structs or pointer indexing ... Options / Best practice?

[system]

This does the same thing (maps names to values) and doesn't use pointers (apart from the pointer to the constant string, which is the name of the item). No copying, no fiddling with taking addresses, etc.

It'd never occurred to me to use references other than for parameter passing, but now you've pointed it out that does seem pretty obvious. It's a neat approach, but using pointers instead of references would produce virtually identical code.