C++ Java static final equivalent

Question

I am using C++ to program a chess game. I want to create two class attributes for the class Board: ROWS and COLUMNS. In Java, I would declare they as static final and everything would work as I want. How I do the same declaration in C++? I need to access these attributes by "Board::ROWS" and "Board::COLUMNS" in other classes.

What I have is this, which is throwing compilation errors since ROWS and COLUMNS are not declared in the scope of the declaration of m_TileMap. Is there a good practice for doing this without using #define statement?

class Board {
  Tile *m_TileMap[ROWS][COLUMNS];

public:
  static const int ROWS = 8;
  static const int COLUMNS = 8;

  Board(int m[ROWS][COLUMNS]);
}

Answer 1

declare your m_TileMap after the declaration of ROWS and COLUMNS

e.g.

class Board {

public:
  static const int ROWS = 8;
  static const int COLUMNS = 8;

  Board(int m[ROWS][COLUMNS]);

private:
  Tile *m_TileMap[ROWS][COLUMNS];
};

The reason for this is because in C++, the compiler does not read forward. So in order for ROWS and COLUMNS to be understood by the compiler when you declare m_TileMap, they need to be declared before.

Answer 2

You can re-order the class members, so that ROWS and COLUMNS are declared before they're used:

class Board {
public:
  static const int ROWS = 8;
  static const int COLUMNS = 8;

  Board(int m[ROWS][COLUMNS]);

private: 
  Tile *m_TileMap[ROWS][COLUMNS];
};