I need start off with code because I am not sure what terminology to use. Lets say I have the following code:

 class Node
 { 
 public:
  void Parse(rapidxml::xml_node<> *node) 
  {
   for (rapidxml::xml_attribute<> *attr = node->first_attribute();
        attr;
        attr = attr->next_attribute())
   {
    std::stringstream converter;
    converter << attr->value();

    if( !strcmp(attr->name(), "x") ) converter >> x;
    else if( !strcmp(attr->name(),"y") ) converter >> y;
    else if( !strcmp(attr->name(), "z") ) converter >> z;
   }
  }

 private:
  float x;
  float y;
  float z;
 };

What I can't stand is the repetition of if( !strcmp(attr->name(), "x") ) converter >> x; I feel that this is error prone and monotonous, but I cannot think of another way to map a string value to a member assignment. What are some other approaches one can take to avoid code such as this? The only other possible alternative I could think of was to use a hashmap, but that runs into problems with callbacks

This is the best I could up with but it's not as flexible as I'd like:

 class Node
 {
  Node() : x(0.0f), y(0.0f), z(0.0f) 
  {
   assignmentMap["x"] = &x;
   assignmentMap["y"] = &y;
   assignmentMap["z"] = &z;
  }

 public:
  void Parse(rapidxml::xml_node<> *node) 
  {
   for (rapidxml::xml_attribute<> *attr = node->first_attribute();
        attr;
        attr = attr->next_attribute())
   {
    if( !attr->name() ) continue;

    std::stringstream converter;
    converter << attr->value();
    converter >> *assignmentMap[attr->name()];
   }
  }

 private:
  float x;
  float y;
  float z;

  std::map<std::string, float*> assignmentMap;
 };