Question

I’m wondering if I can call a static member function inside a cpp file like the following:

A.h

class A
{
public:
A(){}
virtual ~A(){}

static void Initialize(){ g_pSomeType = new SomeType();}

private:
static SomeType* g_pSomeType;
};

A.cpp

#include "A.h"

SomeType* A::g_pSomeType = nullptr;

A::Initialize(); //here I get an error: "Initialize may not be redeclared outside of it's class"

Is it possible to do something like this? So that I would be able to initialize the static members inside the .cpp file of the class, to avoid users from having to call initialize() first? I suppose I could find a way to work around this problem but I’m curious if there’s a way to let this work. Thanks.

Answer 1

You cannot write any executable code outside a function body. You can only call A::Initialize() (or do any other function/method call) only if you’re inside a function or a method…

The compiler thinks that you’re declaring A::Initialize() again rather than calling it.