How to catch exception thrown while initializing a static member

Question

I have a class with a static member:

class MyClass
{
public:
    static const SomeOtherClass myVariable;
};

Which I initialize in the CPP f

Answer 1

I don't like static data members much, the problem of initialization being foremost.

Whenever I have to do significant processing, I cheat and use a local static instead:

class MyClass
{
public:
    static const SomeOtherClass& myVariable();
};

const SomeOtherClass& MyClass::myVariable()
{
  static const SomeOtherClass MyVariable(someOtherFunction());
  return MyVariable;
}

This way, the exception will be throw only on first use, and yet the object will be const.

This is quite a powerful idiom to delay execution. It had a little overhead (basically the compiler checks a flag each time it enters the method), but better worry about correctness first ;)

If this is called from multiple threads:

• if your compiler handles it, fine
• if your compiler does not, you may be able to use local thread storage (it's const anyway)
• you could use boost::once in the Boost.Threads library
• since it's const, you may not care if it's initialized multiple times, unless someOtherFunction does not support parallel execution (beware of resources)

Guideline: only use static or global variables instantiation for simple objects (that cannot throw), otherwise use local static variables to delay execution until you can catch the resulting exceptions.