Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: malloced structure initilization
Keywords: sizeof initialize malloc
Message-ID: <1876@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 13 Feb 89 21:16:06 GMT
References: <202@sabin.UUCP> <489@madnix.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 14

In article <489@madnix.UUCP> glasser@madnix.UUCP (Daniel Glasser) writes:
<If you need to initialize a structure allocated by a call to malloc()
<the best way to go about it is (for most modern compilers):
<	struct foreign *x;
<	if ((x = malloc(sizeof(*x))) == NULL)
<		panic("can't allocate...");
<	else
<		memset(x, 0, sizeof(*x));

Not true. If what you want is a 0 bit pattern, the best way is:
	struct foreign *x;
	if ((x = (struct foreign *) calloc(sizeof(*x),1)) == NULL)
		panic("can't allocate...");
calloc is a standard function, and is more commonly available than memset.