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4 - 3 Default Initialization

The document discusses how variables are initialized by default based on their duration. Automatic variables, which have local non-static duration, are not guaranteed an initial value and may contain garbage. Static variables, which have global or static local duration, are guaranteed to be initialized to 0 if no explicit initializer is provided. While older compilers only allowed initialization of aggregate objects like arrays for static variables, modern ANSI compilers remove this limitation.

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21 views

4 - 3 Default Initialization

The document discusses how variables are initialized by default based on their duration. Automatic variables, which have local non-static duration, are not guaranteed an initial value and may contain garbage. Static variables, which have global or static local duration, are guaranteed to be initialized to 0 if no explicit initializer is provided. While older compilers only allowed initialization of aggregate objects like arrays for static variables, modern ANSI compilers remove this limitation.

Uploaded by

gdskumar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4.

3 Default Initialization
The duration of a variable (whether static or automatic) also affects its default
initialization.

If you do not explicitly initialize them, automatic-duration variables (that is, local, non-
static ones) are not guaranteed to have any particular initial value; they will typically
contain garbage. It is therefore a fairly serious error to attempt to use the value of an
automatic variable which has never been initialized or assigned to: the program will
either work incorrectly, or the garbage value may just happen to be ``correct'' such that
the program appears to work correctly! However, the particular value that the garbage
takes on can vary depending literally on anything: other parts of the program, which
compiler was used, which hardware or operating system the program is running on, the
time of day, the phase of the moon. (Okay, maybe the phase of the moon is a bit of an
exaggeration.) So you hardly want to say that a program which uses an uninitialized
variable ``works''; it may seem to work, but it works for the wrong reason, and it may
stop working tomorrow.

Static-duration variables (global and static local), on the other hand, are guaranteed to
be initialized to 0 if you do not use an explicit initializer in the definition.

(Once upon a time, there was another distinction between the initialization of automatic
vs. static variables: you could initialize aggregate objects, such as arrays, only if they had
static duration. If your compiler complains when you try to initialize a local array, it's
probably an old, pre-ANSI compiler. Modern, ANSI-compatible compilers remove this
limitation, so it's no longer much of a concern.)

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