Question

If the title was not clear, I will try to clarify what I am asking:

Imagine I have a variable called counter, I know I can see its current value by doing something like:

std::cout << counter << std::endl;

However, assume I have lots of variables and I don’t know which I’m going to want to look at until runtime.

Does anyone know a way I can fetch the value of a variable by using its name, for example:

std::cout << valueOf("counter") << std::endl;

I feel being able to do this might make debugging large complex projects easier.

Thanks in advance for your time.

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Update: All the answers provided are valid and useful, however the main point is that reflection does not exist in C++ (and after reading the link recommended it is clear why).

Answer 1

As has been mentioned, you are looking for reflection in C++. It doesn’t have that, and this answer explains why.