Initializing enum-indexed array?

I suspect this extension exists precisely because there is no simple, portable way of achieving this behaviour. You can emulate it using something like:

enum keys
{
  key_alpha = 0,
  key_beta = 1,
  key_gamma = 2
};

struct ValType {
  int v;
  const char *name;
};

template <int key>
struct param;

#define SETPARAM(key,value1,value2) \
template <> \
struct param< (key) > { \
  static constexpr ValType t {(value1),(value2)}; \
}

SETPARAM(key_alpha, 0x03b1,"alpha");
SETPARAM(key_gamma, 0x03b3,"gamma");
SETPARAM(key_beta, 0x03b2,"beta");

which is portable and meets your requirements without being particularly "heavy templates".

If you're not using C++11 you can still do this, the macro that specialises the param template will become slightly longer though.

---

Modification to make use like int i = someinput(); cout << param<i>::t.name; legal:

#include <cassert>

enum keys
{
  key_alpha = 0,
  key_beta = 1,
  key_gamma = 2
};

struct ValType {
  int v;
  const char *name;
};

template <int key>
struct param {
  enum { defined = false };
  static constexpr ValType t {0, 0};
};

template <int key>
constexpr ValType param<key>::t;

static const int MAXPARAM=255;

#define SETPARAM(key,value1,value2) \
template <> \
struct param< (key) > { \
  static_assert(key <= MAXPARAM, "key too big"); \
  enum { defined = true }; \
  static constexpr ValType t {(value1),(value2)}; \
}; \
constexpr ValType param<(key)>::t

template <int C=0>
struct get_helper {
  static const ValType& get(int i) {
    return i==0 ? (check(), param<C>::t) : get_helper<C+1>::get(i-1);
  }
private:
  static void check() {
    assert(param<C>::defined);
  }
};

template <>
struct get_helper<MAXPARAM> {
  static const ValType& get(int) {
    assert(false);
  }
};

const ValType& GETPARAM(int key) {
  return get_helper<>::get(key);
}

The trick is to instantiate get_helper and recurse through the calls with a flag that can be used to assert the validity of the index. You can increase MAXPARAM if needed, but it'll make compiling slower.

Example usage is pretty simple still:

#include "enumidx.hh"
#include <iostream>

SETPARAM(key_alpha, 0x03b1,"alpha");
SETPARAM(key_gamma, 0x03b3,"gamma");
SETPARAM(key_beta, 0x03b2,"beta");

int main() {
  int key = key_beta;
  const ValType& v = GETPARAM(key);
  std::cout << v.name << std::endl;
}

To have more than one of these in any given program you could use anonymous namespaces and/or make the name of the base struct (param in this example) a macro argument and add another macro STARTPARAM(?) to define the unspecialised template of that name.

#include <iostream>

#define KEYS_DEF \
    KEY_DEF( alpha, 0x03b1, "alpha" ),  \
    KEY_DEF( beta,  0x03b2, "beta" ),   \
    KEY_DEF( gamma, 0x03b3, "gamma" )

#define KEY_DEF( identifier, id, name )  identifier
enum keys { KEYS_DEF };

#undef KEY_DEF
#define KEY_DEF( identifier, id, name )  { id, name }
struct ValType { int id; char const* name; };
ValType const values[] = { KEYS_DEF };

int main()
{
    using namespace std;
    for( int i = alpha;  i <= gamma;  ++i )
    {
        cout << values[i].name << endl;
    }
}

A cheap, sneaky, cheaty solution: define the "values" variable in a separate .c file next to all the .cpp files, define the enum and "extern values" in a .h file.