How to call a function by its name (std::string) in C++?

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What you have described is called reflection and C++ doesn’t support it. However you might come with some work-around, for example in this very concrete case you might use an std::map that would map names of functions (std::string objects) to function pointers, which in case of functions with the very same prototype could be easier than it might seem:

#include <iostream>
#include <map>

int add(int i, int j) { return i+j; }
int sub(int i, int j) { return i-j; }

typedef int (*FnPtr)(int, int);

int main() {
    // initialization:
    std::map<std::string, FnPtr> myMap;
    myMap["add"] = add;
    myMap["sub"] = sub;

    // usage:
    std::string s("add");
    int res = myMap[s](2,3);
    std::cout << res;
}

Note that myMap[s](2,3) retrieves the function pointer mapped to string s and invokes this function, passing 2 and 3 to it, making the output of this example to be 5

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