Efficient data structure for searching numbers and strings

Question

Hi, I have a scenario where in strings and numbers are combined into a single entity. I need to search based on the string or the number. How do I go about with the data structure for this? I thought of coming up with a hashing for strings and search tree approach for numbers. Can you please comment on my choice and also suggest better structures if any?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Use two std::maps, one from std::string to a pointer and the other from number to a pointer. The pointers go to your "single entity". See how far you can scale this (millions of entries...) before trying to optimize further.