Hi All,

It appears that static members of templates are constructed only after a
template instance is constructed.  Is this correct behaviour?.

Below is some example code that demonstrates (CShared constructor is
called after CWrapper constructor - Only one message box is displayed -
"Prepare to die").

Any ideas about how to get around the problem?.

I am using VC++ 6.0.

Thanks for previous help,

David.

//**************** The code ...

class CShared
{
public:

     CShared()
     {
         MessageBox(NULL, _T("CShared Constructor"), _T(""), MB_OK);
         mMessage = _T("Joy To The World");
     }

     TCHAR GetChar()
     {
         return (*mMessage);
     }

private:

     TCHAR*   mMessage;

template<class Wrapped>
class CWrapper
{
public:

     CWrapper()
     {
         MessageBox(NULL, _T("Prepare to die"), _T(""), MB_OK);

         /*
          * mSharedObject.mMessage should contain _T("Joy To The World")
          * at this point & lChar should be set to 'J'.
          */
         TCHAR lChar = mSharedObject.GetChar(); // this line crashes.
         MessageBox(NULL, _T("Never Gets Here"), _T(""), MB_OK);
     }

protected:
     static CShared mSharedObject;

template <class Wrapped>
CShared CWrapper<Wrapped>::mSharedObject;

class CDummy
{};

// Constructing this object causes a crash.
CWrapper<CDummy>    gWrapped;

14.7.1 Implicit instantiation
...the initialization (and any associated side-effects) of a static data member
does not occur unless the static data member is itself used in a way that
requires the definition of the static data member to exist.

I would expect that explicit instantiation of the static member should
do the job. Unfortunately your program crashes even with explicitly
instantiated static member (and this I think indeed is a bug).
Funny as it may look explicit specialization helps. See at the end of
this message.

// this does not help
// template CShared CWrapper<CDummy>::sSharedObject;

// this does
template<> CShared CWrapper<CDummy>::sSharedObject;

Sergei

Thanks Sergei :).