In computer programming, a static variable is a variable that has been allocated "statically", meaning that its lifetime(or "extent") is the entire run of the program. This is in contrast to shorter-lived automatic variables, whose storage is stack allocated and deallocated on the call stack; and in contrast to objects, whose storage is dynamically allocatedand deallocated in heap memory.
An example of static local variable in C:
#include <stdio.h>
void func();
int main() { //int argc, char *argv[] inside the main is optional in the particular program
func(); // prints 1
func(); // prints 2
func(); // prints 3
func(); // prints 4
func(); // prints 5
return 0;
}
void func() {
static int x = 0;
/* x is initialized only once across five calls of func() and
the variable will get incremented five
times after these calls. The final value of x will be 5. */
x++;
printf("%d\n", x); // outputs the value of x
}
