useless class storage specifier in empty declaration

Question

gcc 4.4.1 c89

I have the following code:

static enum states {     ACTIVE,     RUNNING,     STOPPED,     IDLE }; 

And I get a warning:

useless class storage specifier in empty declaration 

However, if i remove the static keyword I don't get that warning.

I am compiling with the following flags:

-Wall -Wextra 

Many thanks for any suggestions,

Answer 1

You get the message because you're not actually declaring, you're only defining something, namely an enumeration named "states". You can later use this definition to declare a variable of that type. That variable may be a static or instance variable, but the definition doesn't need (and shouldn't have) the storage specifier attached to it.