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The C++ equivalent is... it just works. Static variables in a function are initialized exactly once the first time a function is entered per the language definition.

This is one of the many great improvements of C++11

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Except you pay this cost (locks + codegen) even for PODs with known data at compile time.

No. PODs that are initialized with no side-effects can be optimized away into compile-time initialization. E.g. if you have an integer that is static inside a function, it can just be initialized old-school.

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