Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: const comparison in C and C++
Message-ID: <8549@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 20 Sep 88 21:27:20 GMT
References: <709@paris.ICS.UCI.EDU> <8500@smoke.ARPA> <1411@solo3.cs.vu.nl> <782@proxftl.UUCP> <12184@steinmetz.ge.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <12184@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  Am I misreading the standard? My interpretation was that uninitialized
>global storage was set to *all bit zero* and that there was something
>that mentioned this might not be zero for types other than integral
>types.

Other way around.  When initializers aren't specified for data having
static storage duration, the initial contents are zero (of the
appropriate type), not 0-bit patterns.  On several architectures this
distinction has no practical significance, but on some it does.