Joe Nelson <joe@begriffs.com> writes:
> Isaac Morland wrote:
>> I hope you'll forgive a noob question. Why does the "After"
>> initialization for the boolean array have {0} rather than {false}?
> I think using a value other than {0} potentially gives the incorrect
> impression that the value is used for *all* elements of the
> array/structure, whereas it is only used for the first element.
There's been something vaguely bothering me about this proposal,
and I think you just crystallized it.
> Using {false} may encourage the unwary to try
> bool foo[2] = {true};
> which will not set all elements to true.
Right. I think that in general it's bad practice for an initializer
to not specify all fields/elements of the target. It is okay in the
specific case that we're substituting for a memset(..., 0, ...).
Perhaps we could make this explicit by using a coding style like
/* in c.h or some such place: */
#define INIT_ALL_ZEROES {0}
/* in code: */
Datum values[N] = INIT_ALL_ZEROES;
and then decreeing that it's not project style to use a partial
initializer other than in this way.
regards, tom lane