Edit Question - KnowledgeHub

Title Body

I'm writing a C++ class to read input from a file into preallocated buffers called "chunks". I want the caller to be able to call a public static Chunk class method called GetNextFilledChunk() , which Grabs a Chunk from an inactive chunk pool Fills the Chunk instance from the input stream using the Chunk's private member variables/functions Returns a pointer to the Chunk to the caller But step 2 is giving me fits. No matter what I've tried, trying to get to the Chunk instance's private member variables/functions causes g++ 4.2.1 to emit errors. Here's a piece of the class definition from the header file: class Chunk { public: Chunk(); ... static Chunk* GetNextFilledChunk(); ... private: ... ssize_t m_ActualTextSize; }; And here's part of the source file that shows the problem: #include "Chunk.h" Chunk:: Chunk* GetNextFilledChunk() { ... theChunk = sInactiveChunks.top(); sInactiveChunks.pop(); ... theChunk->m_ActualTextSize = TextSize(); // PROBLEM IS HERE ... return theChunk; } As shown, g++ complains that GetNextFilledChunk() is trying to access a private member of Chunk. Then I thought, maybe it needs to be a "friend". But everything I've tried to do in header file to make GetNextFilledChunk() a friend results in an error. For instance: friend static Chunk* GetNextFilledChunk(); results in "Chunk.h:23: warning: ‘Chunk* GetNextFilledChunk()’ declared ‘static’ but never defined" What I find truly bizarre is that if I simply make GetNextFilledChunk() a plain old function, not a static member function, I can "friend" it and everybody is happy. But that seems silly - why should one be able to do something in a class from a non-class function that can't be done from a static member function? So.

Tags (comma-separated) Cancel