When should I write the keyword ‘static’ before a non-member function?

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static, as I think you’re using it, is a means of symbol hiding. Functions declared static are not given global visibility (a Unix-like nm will show these as ‘t’ rather than ‘T’). These functions cannot be called from other translation units.

For C++, static in this sense has been replaced, more or less, by the anonymous namespace, e.g.,

static int x = 0;

is pretty equivalent to

namespace {
  int x = 0;
}

Note that the anonymous namespace is unique for every compilation unit.

Unlike static, the anonymous namespace also works for classes. You can say something like

namespace {
 class Foo{};
}

and reuse that class name for unrelated classes in other translation units. I think this goes to your point 3.

The compiler actually gives each of the symbols you define this way a unique name (I think it includes the compilation time). These symbols are never available to another translation unit and will never collide with a symbol from another translation unit.

Note that all non-member functions declared to be inline are also by default static. That’s the most common (and implicit) use of static. As to point 2, defining a static but not inline function in a header is a pretty corner case: it’s not dangerous per se but it’s so rarely useful it might be confusing. Such a function might or might not be emitted in every translation unit. A compiler might generate warnings if you never actually call the function in some TUs. And if that static function has within it a static variable, you get a separate variable per translation unit even with one definition in a single .h which might be confusing. There just aren’t many (non-inline) use cases.

As to point 4, I suspect those people are conflating the static member function meaning of static with that of the linkage meaning of static. Which is as good a reason as any for using the anonymous namespace for the latter.

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