Question

I am trying to initialize an int with a particular value once only and use it repeatedly.

void some_method(int par){
    int ch=1;
  if (ch==1){
    int x = par;
  }
  int y = x + 2;
}

I know this code will definitely not work because x is only within the scope of the if statement. some_method() is called repeatedly in a while loop, so if I declare x outside the if statement then every time some_method() is called, default to zero. I just want x to remain constant. I thought about just making x a global variable, but I am sure there has got to be a better solution than that. Any suggestions will be helpful!

Thanks.

Answer 1

This can be done with static variables:

void some_method(...)
{
  static int initialized = 0, x;

  if(!initialized)
  {
    x = ...
    initialized = 1;
  }
  /* Use x. */
}

Note that you then need to “pay” for the check of initialized on every call, but if the work done to compute the value of x is expensive enough it might be worth it.