How to initialize array to 0 in C?

Question

I need a big null array in C as a global. Is there any way to do this besides typing out

char ZEROARRAY[1024] = {0, 0, 0, /* ... 1021 more times... */ };

?

Answer 1

If you'd like to initialize the array to values other than 0, with gcc you can do:

int array[1024] = { [ 0 ... 1023 ] = -1 };

This is a GNU extension of C99 Designated Initializers. In older GCC, you may need to use -std=gnu99 to compile your code.

Answer 2

Global variables and static variables are automatically initialized to zero. If you have simply

char ZEROARRAY[1024];

at global scope it will be all zeros at runtime. But actually there is a shorthand syntax if you had a local array. If an array is partially initialized, elements that are not initialized receive the value 0 of the appropriate type. You could write:

char ZEROARRAY[1024] = {0};

The compiler would fill the unwritten entries with zeros. Alternatively you could use memset to initialize the array at program startup:

memset(ZEROARRAY, 0, 1024);

That would be useful if you had changed it and wanted to reset it back to all zeros.