Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!proton!andru
From: andru@proton.lcs.mit.edu (Andrew Myers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Are global class objects special?
Message-ID: <1990Oct4.212120.2266@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 90 21:21:20 GMT
References: <28241@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1990Oct2.162451.3101@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <11427@alice.att.com>
Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius)
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Lines: 16

In article <11427@alice.att.com> ark@alice.att.com (Andrew Koenig) writes:
>In article <1990Oct2.162451.3101@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, hall@eclipse.stanford.edu (Keith Hall) writes:
>
>> Having the constructors called in the proper order seems so
>> fundamental that I don't understand why that behavior is not already
>> ensured by the compiler/linker.
>
>What is the proper order?  How can a compiler determine what
>that order is?

With a small amount of work, it's possible to create a class which orders
global constructors (and other operations to be performed before main)
based on a dependency graph. Similarly, the same technique can be used to
unwind the process and do ordered global destruction, if desired.

Andrew