Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!ulysses!andante!alice!ark
From: ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: static members
Message-ID: <9389@alice.UUCP>
Date: 24 May 89 14:42:09 GMT
References: <360@msor0.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner NJ
Lines: 35

In article <360@msor0.UUCP>, kt@msor.UUCP (Keith Tizzard) writes:

> "No initializer can be specified for a static member, and it cannot
> be of a class with a constructor."

> 1	the meaning of the piece after the comma is not clear to me -
> 	does it really mean that if I provide a constructor  for a class
> 	then I cannot have a static member variable in that class?

No.  It means that if T is a class with a constructor,
no static members of a class may be of type T.  Example:

	class T {
	public:
		T();
	};

	class S {
	public:
		static T t;		// illegal
	};

This will change in C++ 2.0; the example above will be legal
but S::t will have to be defined explicitly somewhere in the
program:

	T S::t;

The reason for requiring a separate definition is that the
declaration of class S may be compiled several times
in separate source files; requiring a single definition
is the only way to cope with the various linkers out there.
-- 
				--Andrew Koenig
				  ark@europa.att.com