Is it possible to map string to int faster than using hashmap?

Question

I understand that I should not optimize every single spot of my program so please consider this question to be \"academic\"

I have maximum 100 strings and integer n

Answer 1

(Yet) Another small addition to sehe's answer:

Apart from Perfect Hash Functions, there's this Minimal Perfect Hash Function thing, and respectively C Minimal Perfect Hash Function. It is almost the same as gperf, except that:

gperf is a bit different, since it was conceived to create very fast perfect hash functions for small sets of keys and CMPH Library was conceived to create minimal perfect hash functions for very large sets of keys

The CMPH Library encapsulates the newest and more efficient algorithms in an easy-to-use, production-quality, fast API. The library was designed to work with big entries that cannot fit in the main memory. It has been used successfully for constructing minimal perfect hash functions for sets with more than 100 million of keys, and we intend to expand this number to the order of billion of keys

source: http://cmph.sourceforge.net/