I have the following classes in C++:
class CollectionItem {...};
class Collection {...};
Collection managers a list of CollectionItem instances. CollectionItem has a char[32] "name" property and a type[32] "type". The name property is meant to be unique for that specific CollectionItem instance while "type" is for grouping, and Collection is only meant to add CollectionItem instances who's "type" meets Collection's "key" char[32].
CollectionItem is meant to be an abstract class to be instanced like so:
class Object : public CollectionItem {}; // Object's inherited "type" will be "scene_object"
class PointLight : public CollectionItem {}; // PointLight's inherited "type" will be "scene_pointlight"
class Model : public CollectionItem {}; // Model's inherited "type" will be "scene_model"
As you can see all "Object" instances are meant to have the same value for "type", while PointLight instances will have their own group value, etc. The problem is that I'm using a bunch of redundant memory. Each instance of CollectionItem results in an extra 32 bytes of the same string... Thousands of these items can exist at once in some applications. I know that's only 32KB of fluff space per 1024 CollectionItems, but I'd like to cut that down if possible.
I'd like to make "type" static, and change its value for each class it inherits from. Problem is, inheriting classes don't get their own class-wide copy of that static data member. By design, inherited classes all share their superclass counterpart's static member.
I could just declare a static member of char[32] "type" in all subclasses, but Collection isn't going to evaluate subclass versions of "type", it's only going to see CollectionItem's type.
Any ideas?
