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From: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Why no renew
Message-ID: <12132@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 19 Mar 91 02:56:37 GMT
References: <10895@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Mar3.053504.14027@mathcs.sjsu.edu> <281@nazgul.UUCP> <1991Mar14.042611.14921@mathcs.sjsu.edu>
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Reply-To: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck)
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In article <1991Mar14.042611.14921@mathcs.sjsu.edu>, horstman@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Cay Horstmann) writes:
|> I repeat my request that operator new should default to initializing the
|> memory with the logical 0 value for the type allocated (almost always an
|> all-0 bit pattern, but then who knows how 0 pointers or 0.0 floats are
|> represented on some crazy systems.) ANSI, are you listening?

How are you going to implement this?  operator new is handed a size_t
object and returns an object of type void.  It doesn't know what type
it's supposed to return.  Or do you want to make the "default" operator
new special (preventing a user from writing something similar)?

Even if you could solve the technical problems, I'm still against it;
it will just lead to lazy programming and subtle bugs (people will
stop worrying about initializing every object member).

Next you'll be asking for a guarantee that when I write

void foo (int arg1) {
	char byteArray[BIGBUF];
	int intArray[INTBUF];
	...
}

that byteArray and intArray be initialized to all zeros as well.  If not,
why not?  Why should creating an array with new be different from making
automatic variables?

--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck