How to execute a piece of code only once?

Compact version using lambda function:

void foo()
{
    static bool once = [](){
        cout << "once" << endl;
        return true;
    } ();
    cout << "foo" << endl;
}

Code within lambda function is executed only once, when the static variable is initialized to the return value of lambda function. It should be thread-safe as long as your compiler support thread-safe static initialization.

Using C++11 -- use the std::call_once

#include <mutex>

std::once_flag onceFlag;

{
    ....
    std::call_once ( onceFlag, [ ]{ /* my code body here runs only once */ } );
    ....
}