https://codesynthesis.com/~boris/blog//2012/02/21/access-static-members-via-instance/ Boris Kolpackov's blog about software Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:59:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 https://codesynthesis.com/~boris/blog//2012/02/21/access-static-members-via-instance/#comment-1867 Boris Kolpackov Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:24:56 +0000 https://codesynthesis.com/~boris/blog//2012/02/21/access-static-members-via-instance/#comment-1867 Good question. It seems the answer depends on how you interpret the standard. I agree it is probably best to avoid accessing a non-static member via a NULL pointer. In case of a static member, however, I don't see any logical reason why it cannot be done safely even if one can interpret the standard in such a way that it calls for undefined behavior. From a practical point of view, a compiler implementer will have to intentionally add extra code to cause any harm in this situation, since in the generated code x.foo() and x::foo() will result in equivalent instructions (or, in other words, x.foo() can be reduced to x::foo() at compile time). Good question. It seems the answer depends on how you interpret the standard. I agree it is probably best to avoid accessing a non-static member via a NULL pointer. In case of a static member, however, I don’t see any logical reason why it cannot be done safely even if one can interpret the standard in such a way that it calls for undefined behavior. From a practical point of view, a compiler implementer will have to intentionally add extra code to cause any harm in this situation, since in the generated code x.foo() and x::foo() will result in equivalent instructions (or, in other words, x.foo() can be reduced to x::foo() at compile time).

]]> https://codesynthesis.com/~boris/blog//2012/02/21/access-static-members-via-instance/#comment-1866 Simon Dice Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:48:34 +0000 https://codesynthesis.com/~boris/blog//2012/02/21/access-static-members-via-instance/#comment-1866 are you sure that this is not an undefined behavior? Look at this discussion for example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2474018/when-does-invoking-a-member-function-on-a-null-instance-result-in-undefined-beha are you sure that this is not an undefined behavior? Look at this discussion for example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2474018/when-does-invoking-a-member-function-on-a-null-instance-result-in-undefined-beha

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