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From: moore@ucbcad.berkeley.edu (Peter X Moore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Is this a bug?
Message-ID: <1669@ucbcad.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, 11-Jun-87 15:11:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.1669
Posted: Thu Jun 11 15:11:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jun-87 11:42:50 EDT
References: <731@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: moore@cad.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Peter X Moore)
Organization: UC Berkeley, CAD group
Lines: 15
Keywords: streams, bug, global constructors

This is not so much a bug, as an unavoidable feature of the way global 
constructors are implemented.  Both your object and cerr have global
constructors.  All global constructors are grouped together and called
IN ESSENTIALLY A RANDOM ORDER before main.  You are having the good fortune
of having your object's constructor called before cerr's constructor is
called, and so the code for << is core dumping as it tries to use an
unintialized data structure.  The immediate patch is to either use a local
stream variable instead of cerr or fall back to fprintf.  To fix the
general problem seems VERY tough, since it seemingly requires global
interdependacy analysis between all constructors.  Other languages must
face this problem, does anyone know what they do (or don't do)?

	Peter Moore
	moore@Berkeley.edu
	...!ucbvax!moore