In article <e9f5814a-6f0d-4985-aebb-5b68b8c799c2 at x10g2000prk.googlegroups.com>, alex23 <wuwei23 at gmail.com> wrote: > What you're effectively trying to do is use a class before it has been > constructed to help construct itself. > > Just define it as a helper function before the class declaration. Yes, this is the workaround I ended up with.