VERY quick question

Bad things. Don't do that. Use map::find intead. That'll return an iterator. If the iterator == map::end() then it didn't find it.

Edit: btw, that map::end() means yourmap.end(); it's not a static method or anything. Same for find().

Edit again: Ok, actually, if you do map["not existant item"] the map will actually insert the item into the map. But this may not necessarily be desirable, so use insert() and find() instead.

Yep, it'll create an item and associate it with this key. That's why you can't have item types without default constructors in a std::map.