On Thu, Jun 29, 2000 at 05:39:05PM -0400, Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > > > remember whether the C standard requires static variables to be
> > > > initialized to zero by the runtime environment...
> > > They require it.
> >
> > I'm told that AIX's compiler does not necessarily do this for uninitialized
> > values...
>
> That's curious, since it cannot conform to the C standard without doing so
> (the implicit initialization to zero is mandatory), and IBM was a strong
> supporter of the standard. I would guess that this is a matter of either
> old compilers or compilers which mistakenly default to providing a
> non-standard C environment.
or perhaps an odd linker behavior that doesn't ensure that bss is filled.
(my guess).
> Note a subtlety: it's only *static* variables which get the implicit
> initialization to zero. Local variables of functions don't, although it
> often happens by accident (since most kernels zero-fill newly-allocated
> stack memory) and some buggy programs rely on it.
I understand about *static* variables. But the patches that I recall for xterm
were static variables. (Since I'm not debugging on AIX, I more/less have to
take their report seriously since there's more than one report).
--
Thomas E. Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
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