Advantages of using static member functions

[sanketbarot]

Hello Friends,


What is the advantage of defining a function as Static as a class member.

Like

Class Name
{

public :

static void fun()

}

so what is the significance of defining a function as static.

[Banfa]

A static member function can only access static data members of the class, it can not access instance data members.

A static member function can be call with have to instantiate the class via the class name

#include <iostream>
 
using namespace std;
 
class myClass
{
protected:
    static int iCount;
 
public:
    myClass()
    {
        iCount++;
    }
    ~myClass()
    {
        iCount--;
    }
 
    static int GetInstantiationCount()
    {
        return iCount;
    }
};
 
int myClass::iCount = 0;
 
int main()
{
    cout << "Number of myClass instantiated: " << myClass::GetInstantiationCount() << endl;
 
    myClass *array = new myClass[500];
 
    cout << "Number of myClass instantiated: " << myClass::GetInstantiationCount() << endl;
 
    delete[] array;
 
    cout << "Number of myClass instantiated: " << myClass::GetInstantiationCount() << endl;
 
    return 0;
}
 

[arne]

Hello Friends,


What is the advantage of defining a function as Static as a class member.

Like

Class Name
{

public :

static void fun()

}

so what is the significance of defining a function as static.

Static member functions are associated with the class, not with an object. One can use static member functions, whenever you have functionality (or data) that is not needed to be copied to all objects (e.g. since it is the same).
A simple example would be the number of objects you have made from a class. This information would be stored to a static class member, since is is the same for all objects.
Another advantage concerns the scope. Your fun() function in the example above is identified via

Name::fun
 

and can thus not be confused with other function which may have the same name. This can be helpful in situations where the compiler would otherwise have problems to identify which function you want to call (think of template arguments as an example).

[sanketbarot]

Thank you friends

[Shana]

Hi frnd

One of the advantage of static menber function in C++ is that it can help to count the number of objects (that uses static function )created in a class as static function will be shared by all the objects.