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From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: malloced structure initilization
Message-ID: <1045@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 89 10:07:05 GMT
References: <202@sabin.UUCP> <8894@alice.UUCP> <1874@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <9649@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2363@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 39


 >Does this mean that if I write:
 >
 >  #include <stdio.h>
 >
 >  static struct {
 >      float ward;
 >      int june;
 >      char wally;
 >      long beaver;
 >      double eddie;
 >      } mayfield;
 >
 >I'm GUARANTEED (at least by the ANSI standard) to get (something like):
 >
 >    0.0, 0, <NUL>, 0, 0.0
 >
 >even on "unusual" architectures where zero-bit-pattern != 0?

Yes (if <NUL> means '\0').

>Presumably that means that any pointers I mention in the structure are
>also set to proper nil pointers of appropriate type?

Yes.

>Specifically, does the initialization of static variables to "zero of the
>appropriate type" apply to members of static structures?

Yes.  From the May 13, 1988 dpANS:

	3.5.7 Initialization

	...

	  If an object that has static storage duration is not
	initialized explicitly, it is initialized implicitly as if every
	member that has arithmetic type were assigned 0 and every member
	that has pointer type were assigned a null pointer constant.