Question

I have a class in header file:

class Employee
    {
        //Private data members
    private:
        string firstName;
        string lastName;
        char gender;

        //number of employees
        const static int numEmployees = 0;

    public: 
    ....
    };

The dumb thing is in “GUIDELINE” from instructor said that declare numEmployees as a static integer value of 0 in private member of class

Problem is I can’t update numEmployees variable since it’s const, for example when you declare Constructor in public: .. you can not increase numEmployees = numEmployees + 1.

If you don’t declare numEmployees as const, just do static int numEmployees; visual studio 2010 give error said that only const will be declared in class.

Any idea how to declare numEmployees? Thank you!

Answer 1

Initialize numEmployees outside of the class as

Employee::numEmployees = 0

and declare it a public member in the class as

static int numEmployees;

You can also declare it private without intialization, as a static member is assigned zero by default.