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From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Can you initialize private static data members?
Message-ID: <404@odi.ODI.COM>
Date: 31 Jul 89 13:23:41 GMT
References: <11327@brunix.UUCP>
Sender: news@odi.com
Reply-To: dlw@odi.com
Lines: 43
In-reply-to: jps@cs.brown.edu's message of 26 Jul 89 20:30:41 GMT

In article <11327@brunix.UUCP> jps@cs.brown.edu (John Shewchuk) writes:

   From: jps@cs.brown.edu (John Shewchuk)
   Date: 26 Jul 89 20:30:41 GMT
   Organization: Brown Computer Science

   Given:

     class X {
       ...
     public:
       X(char *);  // The only constructor
     }

   and

     class Y {
     private:
       static X x;
     public:
       ...
     }

   Is there any way to initialize Y::x?  The references seem to
   indicate that Y::x can not be initialized by saying

     X Y::x("Test");  

   because Y::x is private.  Is this correct?

No; there's an exception to the access rules so that it can be
initialized.

According to the Product Reference Manual, page 60, sec 9.4:

"Static members obey the usual class member access rules, except that
they can be initialized (in file scope)."

Experimentation on a simple test case shows that this works properly
in Cfront 2.0.  Thanks to our local C++ language expert, Sam Haradvala,
for researching this and checking it out.

Dan Weinreb		Object Design, Inc.		dlw@odi.com