Uninitialized externals and statics.

[Henry Spencer]

In article <2128 at infmx.UUCP> dror at infmx.UUCP (Dror Matalon) writes:
>	K&R 2.4 say "External and static variables are initialized 
>to zero by default, but it is good style to state the initialization
>anyway."
>
>	Is this really portable ? I always initialize globals but I want
>to know if I need to change some old stuff that counts on uninitialized
>variables being initialized to zero.

The initialization to zero for external and static variables is a property
of the C language; all definitions of the language agree on this.  Any
compiler that does not implement it is broken.

Note that automatic variables (i.e., essentially all variables defined
within a function) do *not* get initialized to anything in particular.
-- 
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1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu