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From: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Block Initialization
Message-ID: <3965@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 23:58:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3965
Posted: Tue Oct 21 23:58:15 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 22:14:07 EDT
References: <586@calma.UUCP> <4510@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci.
Lines: 16
Summary: bzero is not always bad

>>The chore is to initialize the entire structure to zero.  How do I do it?

In article <4510@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn
(VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>The wrong way is to use bzero(), which fills a region with 0 bytes
>....

Structure assignment is fine in most cases, but suppose instead that
some hapless programmer is supposed to initialise a 40K-byte structure
using a small model compiler on an IBM PC?  There is no space for a
second copy of the structure.  Using bzero() here (assuming it exists,
or after writing it) is reasonable, given the compiler limitations.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris@umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu