Issue with compiling following program

[sanddune008]

Hi,

Following is the program:

* Default indent to -1. This value tells the function
to reuse the previous value. */
void iputs(char *str, int indent = -1);
int main()
{
iputs("Hello there", 10);
iputs("This will be indented 10 spaces by default");
iputs("This will be indented 5 spaces", 5);
iputs("This is not indented", 0);
return 0;
}
void iputs(char *str, int indent)
{
//Statement 1
static i = 0; // holds previous indent value       //followin line is throwing error
if(indent >= 0)
i = indent;
else // reuse old indent value
indent = i;
for( ; indent; indent--) cout << " ";
cout << str << "\n";
}

1. What does statement 1 mean?
2. How does this program achieve the concept of default argument?
3. It throws compiler error at the above statement 1.

Thanks in advance

[grumpy]

To answer questions 1 and 3, "Statement 1" is presumably declaring a static variable named i that is local to the iputs(). It is invalid (hence the compiler complains) as the statement does not specify a type for i. Assuming it is meant to be int, the statement should be "static int i = 0;"

static, in this case, means the value of i is saved between calls of the function.

To answer your second question, look at the declaration of iputs() near the top of your code

void iputs(char *str, int indent = -1);

The bit I've highlighted in red specifies a default value for the argument (indent) of -1. This means that when calling the function, if the second argument is not provided, a value of -1 is supplied.