Advantages of classes with only static methods in C++

Question

Even though there are no static classes in C++, coming from a Java background I use to create a helper class like Util containing only static methods. Is this c

Answer 1

As many others have pointed out, free functions inside a namespace is an approach that's often taken for this sort of thing in c++.

One case I'd make for classes with all static functions is when you'd like to expose a set of functions to information derived from template parameters, i.e.

template <typename Ty>
    class utils
{
public :
// if you need to setup a bunch of secondary types, based on "Ty" that will be used 
// by your utility functions
    struct item_type
    { 
        Ty data;
        // etc
    }; 

// a set of utilities
    static void foo(Ty &data1, item_type &item)
    { 
        // etc
    }
};

You can use this to achieve the effect of a template'd namespace:

int main ()
{
    double data;
    utils<double>::item_type item ;
    utils<double>::foo(data, item);

    return 0;
}

If you're not using templates just stick with namespaces.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

In C++, just make them free functions. There's no need or reason to place them in a class at all. Unless you're doing shizzle with templates.