Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!well!nagle
From: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: disappointed with Pohl's C++ book
Message-ID: <13480@well.UUCP>
Date: 4 Sep 89 16:16:56 GMT
References: <2293@hub.UUCP> <6590235@hplsla.HP.COM>
Reply-To: nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle)
Lines: 18


      Yet another error in Pohl's book is on page 88, where he says,
"A class with a static member cannot have a constructor."  This is
of course incorrect, and Pohl thus misses out on the whole area of 
classes which have internal relationships among their instances
maintained automatically by the constructors and destructors of the
class.  (See Stroustrup, 5.4.4).  

      The real restriction, according to Stroustrup, is that a static 
member of a class cannot be of a type which has a constructor.  Static
members are also forbidden initializers.  (At first thought this
seems strange.  After all, static members are really just global
variables to the implementation, and global variables can be of
a type with a constructor.  But think about what happens when a
class definition is included into several files.  Who does the
initialization?)

					John Nagle