title: Static vs New/Malloc
body: <p>I was wondering if people could shed some light on the uses of "static." I have never run into an issue where I have explicitly declared a variable or method as static. I understand that when declaring something as "static" it gets stuffed into the data segment of your program, similar to globals, and hence the variable is accessible for the run of your program. If this is the case, why not just make a static variable a global variable. Hell, why not just throw this variable on the heap using a new or a malloc, both methods ensure the variable will be available for you throughout the run of your program.</p>