Static Definitions (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)) (original) (raw)

14.7.1 Declare and Define Static Members

When a class has static data members, it is not enough to _declare_the static member; you must also define it. For example:

class Foo { … void method(); static int bar; };

This declaration only establishes that the class Foo has anint named Foo::bar, and a member function namedFoo::method. But you still need to define both method and bar elsewhere. According to the ISO standard, you must supply an initializer in one (and only one) source file, such as:

Other C++ compilers may not correctly implement the standard behavior. As a result, when you switch to g++ from one of these compilers, you may discover that a program that appeared to work correctly in fact does not conform to the standard: g++ reports as undefined symbols any static data members that lack definitions.