Jacob Champion <pchampion@pivotal.io> writes: > On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 7:51 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: >> I concur with Joe here. The reason why some of the existing >> memset's use "false" is for symmetry with other places where we use >> "memset(p, true, n)" to set an array of bools to all-true.
> Why introduce a macro at all for the universal zero initializer, if it > seems to encourage the construction of other (incorrect) macros?
Well, the argument is that some people might think that if {0} is enough to set all array elements to 0, then maybe {1} sets them all to ones (as, indeed, one could argue would be a far better specification than what the C committee actually wrote). Using a separate macro and then discouraging direct use of the incomplete-initializer syntax should help to avoid that error.
Seems avoidable overhead to remind folks on macro existence. Plus, for such a thing macro exist in first place will be hard to remember. So, irrespective in long run, {0} might get used in code and hence seems better to just use {0} from start itself instead of macro/wrapper on top.
Plus, even if someone starts out with thought {1} sets them all to ones, I feel will soon realize by exercising the code isn't the reality. If such code is written and nothing fails, that itself seems bigger issue.
