How to initialize private static members in C++?

Question

What is the best way to initialize a private, static data member in C++? I tried this in my header file, but it gives me weird linker errors:

class foo
{
           


        

Answer 1

If you want to initialize some compound type (f.e. string) you can do something like that:

class SomeClass {
  static std::list _list;

  public:
    static const std::list& getList() {
      struct Initializer {
         Initializer() {
           // Here you may want to put mutex
           _list.push_back("FIRST");
           _list.push_back("SECOND");
           ....
         }
      }
      static Initializer ListInitializationGuard;
      return _list;
    }
};

As the ListInitializationGuard is a static variable inside SomeClass::getList() method it will be constructed only once, which means that constructor is called once. This will initialize _list variable to value you need. Any subsequent call to getList will simply return already initialized _list object.

Of course you have to access _list object always by calling getList() method.