zeroing out memory

Posted by robUK on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by robUK
Published on 2010-05-21T17:35:14Z Indexed on 2010/05/21 17:40 UTC
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Hello,

gcc 4.4.4 c89

I am just wondering what most c programmers do when they want to zero out memory.

For example I have a buffer of 1024 bytes. Sometimes I do this:

char buffer[1024] = {0};

Which will zero all bytes.

However, should I declare like this and use memset?

char buffer[1024];
.
.
memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer);

Is there any real reason you have to zero the memory? What is the worst that can happen by not doing it?

Many thanks for any suggestions,

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