Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!csi.uottawa.ca!news
From: hitz@sim5.csi.uottawa.ca (Martin Hitz)
Subject: Re: const vs. static in class declaration
Message-ID: <1991Apr3.202015.7402@csi.uottawa.ca>
Keywords: const, static, class constants
Sender: news@csi.uottawa.ca
Nntp-Posting-Host: sim5
Organization: University of Ottawa
References: <286@dayton.stanford.edu> <139@grenada.island.COM> <3864@island.COM>
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 20:20:15 GMT

In article <3864@island.COM> chris@island.COM (Chris King) writes:
>Initialization of const static class members are one thing that I really
>think have been poorly thought out in c++. 
> [...]
>rather than
>use a define (I hate defines), I usually do the following:
>
>class array_of_jive {
>    struct jive a[10];
>
>    inline int num_elements() { return(sizeof(a)/sizeof(struct jive)); }
>
>   void tweak_all()
>   {
>       for ( int i = 0 ; i < num_elements(); ++i )
>           a[i].tweak();
>    }
>};
>
>Has anybody found a easier way of doing this.

No. I agree that this is a major uglyness in C++. However, I *do* use
a define in such a case to avoid declaration of N inline functions for
N arrays:

#define DIM(array) (sizeof(array)/sizeof(*array))

class array_of_jive {
   struct jive a[10];

   void tweak_all()
   {
       for ( int i = 0 ; i < DIM(a); ++i )
           a[i].tweak();
    }
};

Martin Hitz (hitz@csi.UOttawa.CA)