Question

I am trying to store information about a class with a template struct with static members during runtime, however I cannot get or set the static member without an error.

Why doesn’t this code work?

template <typename T>
struct InfoHolder
{
    static const char* name;    
};

int main()
{
    InfoHolder<int>::name = "This is an integer";
    cout << InfoHolder<int>::name << endl;

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

If you are getting a linker error. You have to define the name variable somewhere. (declaring it in a class doesn’t allocate it anywhere, cause it is not part of an object)

write this after the class and before main:

template <typename T>
const char *InfoHolder<T>::name;

It is a small inconvenience of static data members.