RE: Proposal: Make use of C99 designated initialisers fornulls/values arrays - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Smith, Peter
Subject RE: Proposal: Make use of C99 designated initialisers fornulls/values arrays
Date
Msg-id 201DD0641B056142AC8C6645EC1B5F62014B92104E@SYD1217
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Proposal: Make use of C99 designated initialisers for nulls/values arrays  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Proposal: Make use of C99 designated initialisers fornulls/values arrays
List pgsql-hackers
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> Sent: Friday, 4 October 2019 2:08 PM

>> #define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_ZERO    {0}
>> #define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_FALSE    {false}

>I would say that's 100% wrong.  The entire point here is that it's memset-equivalent, and therefore writes zeroes,
regardlessof what the datatype is.  
 

I agree it is memset-equivalent.

All examples of the memset code that INIT_ALL_ELEMS_ZERO replaces looked like this:
memset(values, 0, sizeof(values));

Most examples of the memset code that INIT_ALL_ELEMS_FALSE replaces looked like this:
memset(nulls, false, sizeof(nulls));

~

I made the 2nd macro because I anticipate the same folk that don't like setting 0 to a bool will also not like setting
somethingcalled INIT_ALL_ELEMS_ZERO to a bool array.
 

How about I just define them both the same?
#define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_ZERO    {0}
#define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_FALSE    {0}

>As a counterexample, the coding you have above looks a lot like it would work to add
>
>#define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_TRUE    {true}
> which as previously noted will *not* work.  So I think the one-size-fits-all approach is what to use.

I agree it looks that way; in my previous email I should have provided more context to the code.
Below is the full fragment of the last shared patch, which included a note to prevent anybody from doing such a thing.

~~

/*
 * Macros for C99 designated-initialiser syntax to set all array elements to 0/false.
 *
 * Use these macros in preference to explicit {0} syntax to avoid giving a misleading
 * impression that the same value is always used for all elements.
 * e.g.
 * bool foo[2] = {false}; // sets both elements false
 * bool foo[2] = {true}; // does NOT set both elements true
 *
 * Reference: C99 [$6.7.8/21] If there are fewer initializers in a brace-enclosed list than there
 * are elements or members of an aggregate, or fewer characters in a string literal used to
 * initialize an array of known size than there are elements in the array, the remainder of the
 * aggregate shall be initialized implicitly the same as objects that have static storage duration
 */
#define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_ZERO    {0}
#define INIT_ALL_ELEMS_FALSE    {false} 

~~


Kind Regards,
--
Peter Smith
Fujitsu Australia

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