Can I initialize a static const member at run-time in C++?

Question

Is it possible to initialize a static const member of my class during run-time? This variable is a constant throughout my program but I want to send it as a command-line arg

Answer 1

Typically you will have more than one configuration value. So put them in a struct, and the normal global access to it is const.

const config* Config;
...
main (int argc, char* argv [])
{
Config= new config (argc, argv);
...
}

You can get fancier and have a global function to return config, so normal code can't even change the pointer, but it is harder to do that by accident.

A header file exposes get_config () for all to use, but the way to set it is only known to the code that's meant to do so.