The workaround is constexpr hashing void f(std::string const &str) { switch(hash(str)) { case hash("option_1"): std::cout << "First opt

The workaround is constexpr hashing void f(std::string const &str) { switch(hash(str)) { case hash("option_1"): std::cout << "First option\n"; break; case hash("option_2"): std::cout << "Second option\n"; break; default: std::cout << "None of the above\n"; } } It could be as little as converting the final 8 bytes to a uint64_t above and using that. That just happens to be all of them in this case, but there are a bunch of them. Or using minimal perfect hashing. None of this is the language though