Lisandro, You are correct about the C string initializer syntax. I was not paying such close attention to your patch as to pass along to you my feelings that C mixes up integers (especially the chameleon 0) as other types. To me, "" is more communicative of the purpose. I do not have the full text of your comments about the changes you made to the original patch in front of me. I thought you mentioned changing a "" initializer to { 0 }. Though it is trivial, as I recall, the array initializer syntax also specifies that unspecified elements are initialized with zeros. If that is true, then { 0 } is not exactly the same as "", since { 0 } requires zero-initializing the entire char array whereas "" requires zero-initializing only the first element. I'm not sure an intelligent compiler would do anything different than push a block of zeros on the stack in either case. Take my comments as a friendly communication. It is not necessary for you to change the trac ticket on my behalf. Cordially, Larry Baker US Geological Survey 650-329-5608 [email protected] On Apr 23, 2014, at 11:34 PM, Lisandro Dalcin wrote:

On 23 April 2014 23:11, Larry Baker <[email protected]> wrote:

...

Lisandro,

As a matter of personal taste, I prefer that empty strings be used as initializers for C strings. One of the things I dislike extremely about C (and, one of the reasons I think it is so easy in C to write bad code) is its mixing of integers and pointers and integers and chars. Even though { 0 } is identical to { "" } when initializing C strings, I find the latter more informative. I know the C standard specifies that strings are terminated by the null character, which is elsewhere specified to be a byte with all bits equal to zero. However, "" is the literal empty string, whereas 0 (or '\0') is the underlying implementation of the empty string.

Are you talking about this single line:?

static const char empty_error_string[1] = { 0 };

I guess you are proposing to change it to:

static const char empty_error_string[1] = "";

Please note {""} is an array of strings. Perhaps you meant {'\0'}, i.e. the null char literal?

Please confirm your concerns were related to that single line of my patch, so I can update the trac ticket.

-- Lisandro Dalcin --------------- CIMEC (UNL/CONICET) Predio CONICET-Santa Fe Colectora RN 168 Km 472, Paraje El Pozo 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina Tel: +54-342-4511594 (ext 1016) Tel/Fax: +54-342-4511169