Initializing arrays in a class

**ejohns85** · 03-19-2009

Hey,

I have a class Foo, which has a member array of doubles, of length 5. This array is called x. I want x to be a constant array, such that the values in the array are never changed, and I know what I want them to be at the start of my program. However, I don't seem to be able to do this in a concise manner. Here is what I tried :

Code:

class Foo
{
const double x[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
}

This does not work. Nor does:

Code:

class Foo
{
const double x[5];

public Foo()
{
x = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5,};
}

The only way that works is:

Code:

class Foo
{
const double x[5];

public Foo()
{
x[0] = 1;
x[1] = 2;
x[2] = 3;
x[3] = 4;
x[4] = 5;
}
}

But this obviously becomes a very long-winded approach when using larger arrays.

Please could somebody explain what is going on here?

Thanks

**laserlight** · 03-19-2009

In this case it probably makes sense to do this:

Code:

class Foo
{
    static const double x[5];
public:
    // ...
};

Then in the source file:

Code:

const double Foo::x[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

**anon** · 03-19-2009

Basically I don't think it is possible to initialize arrays in classes. If that is so it would be impossible to have a const array per instance. (You can't assign the values one by one either.)

On the other hand, there is no reason why each instance of this class should get their own immutable array. You can declare it static, meaning that it will be shared between all the instances and won't increase the size of the instances.

Code:

class Foo
{
static const double x[5];

};

const double Foo::x[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

On the other hand, with boost you can also do things like this:

Code:

#include <boost/array.hpp>
#include <boost/assign.hpp>

class Foo
{
    const boost::array<int, 5> x;
public:
    Foo():
        x(boost::assign::list_of(1)(2)(3)(4)(5))
    {
    }
};

Although I can't still see any point why you would want each instance to have their own copy of the array if it contains the same immutable values.

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