On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 09:49:29PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote: > On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 11:01:32PM +0300, Nikola Z. Ivanov wrote: > > Remove 0/NULL global variable assignment in mixer-test.c and pcm-test.c > > Why? > > > --- a/tools/testing/selftests/alsa/mixer-test.c > > +++ b/tools/testing/selftests/alsa/mixer-test.c > > @@ -53,10 +53,10 @@ struct ctl_data { > > struct ctl_data *next; > > }; > > > > -int num_cards = 0; > > -int num_controls = 0; > > -struct card_data *card_list = NULL; > > -struct ctl_data *ctl_list = NULL; > > +int num_cards; > > +int num_controls; > > +struct card_data *card_list; > > +struct ctl_data *ctl_list; > > Nothing now sets initial values for these variables so they all have > undefined values which is buggy. The code is relying on the default > values.
Checkpatch reports it as an error, it looks to be part of the C standard that all compilers must initialize globals to 0. Though I suppose it helps with readability to see the num_ counters assigned 0.