Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!netcom!sjsumcs!horstman
From: horstman@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Cay Horstmann)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Why no renew
Message-ID: <1991Mar21.164455.20430@mathcs.sjsu.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 91 16:44:55 GMT
References: <184@heurikon.heurikon.com> <1991Mar16.172814.6525@mathcs.sjsu.edu> <12194@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: San Jose State University - Math/CS Dept.
Lines: 36

In article <12194@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>In article <1991Mar16.172814.6525@mathcs.sjsu.edu>, horstman@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Cay Horstmann) writes:
>|> In article <184@heurikon.heurikon.com> daves@ex.heurikon.com (Dave Scidmore) writes:
>|> >	1) Zeroing is infrequently needed and seldom even helpful.
>|> 
>|> Huh? When you say X** a = new X*[100], isn't it most likely that you want
>|> all those X*'s to be null pointers?
>
>What about when you say
>
>void func() {
>	X* arrayOfPointers[100];
>	...
>}
>
>Wouldn't you want the pointers to be initialized in this case as
>well?  What you're really proposing sounds like specifying a
>default constructor for non-class types (i.e. pointers get 0,
>doubles get 0.0, chars get '\0', etc).  This has some advantages,
>but I would hope there'd be a way of turning it off for cases where
>it's wasteful.
>
>
Joe, I wouldn't argue against that but I am not about to propose it myself.
I like to live in peace. 

There is a reason why I am asking that operator new initialize arrays. If you
write a template class for variable size arrays (of ints, char*, X,...)
it would be desirable to rely on initialization in all cases since there is
(at least with the current template syntax) no way of differentiating 
between class- and non-class types ("#if isclass(X)...")

But in the case of a fixed array inside a single class, I guess one can
have that class's constructor do the initialization. 

Cay