Re: "ubyte[size] store = void" in std.variant

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:04:23 -0400, Graham Fawcett <fawc...@uwindsor.ca>  
wrote:

Hi folks,
The following statement appears in std.variant:

190    union
191    {
192        ubyte[size] store = void;
193        // conservatively mark the region as pointers
194        static if (size >= (void*).sizeof)
195            void* p[size / (void*).sizeof];
196    }

The '= void' on line 192 sometimes leads to 'Error: void initializer
has no value' errors in application code. For example, this fails to
compile on DMD 2.047:

  foreach (int v; map! "a.get!int" (variantArray(1,2,3)))
    writeln(v);

Changing line 192 to 'ubyte[size] store;' resolves the issue.

My question is: what is the point of the '= void' initializer here?
Would std.variant be broken if '= void' were removed?

= void means don't initialize the data.  Otherwise, the compiler/runtime  
will fill in the data will all 0s.  However, I'm not sure how that works  
with a union, since you may have conflicting requirements for  
initialization.

Is there a place in the spec that covers this?

-Steve