May be a (likely) coincidence. I could imagine that any memory that is freshly acquired from the operating system is initialized somehow before it is handed over to the application. If the OS left the data written by some other application, this might cause security problems.

In fact, I verfied with a short C++ program that similar behavior is found:

--------------
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    int *x = new int[1024*1024];
    for(int i=0;i<50;i++)
        std::cout << x[i+200000] << "\n";
}
--------------

One call did indeed give my all zeros. For smaller chunks of memory, it may be more likely to get some recycled allocation that has already been written to by the application itself.


On 08/08/10 02:28, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
This is a modified example from TDPL, page 185-186, although I've increased the 
size of the array here:

class Transmogrifier
{
     double[512] alpha = void;
     size_t usedAlpha;

     this()
     {
     }
}

void main()
{
     auto t = new Transmogrifier;
     writeln(t.alpha);
}

This will write 512 zeros in my case. If I understood correctly, then alpha is 
an array containing 512 uninitialized values. Which is confusing me as to why 
I'm getting back zeros.

If this was C (minus the classes), I'd get back random values at random 
locations in memory until I stepped into the wrong place, which would hopefully 
terminate my app.

I guess I need a primer in how D manages memory, is what I'm really saying. :)

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