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From: Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] net #9 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 30 May 2001 09:32:39 GMT."
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Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 20:30:18 +1000
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On Wed, 30 May 2001 09:32:39 +0000 (UTC), 
"Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <mailgate@hometree.net> wrote:
>Andrzej Krzysztofowicz <ankry@green.mif.pg.gda.pl> writes:
>
>>-static char	name[4][IFNAMSIZ] = { "", "", "", "" };
>
>>+static char	name[4][IFNAMSIZ];
>
>Ugh. Sure about that one? the variables have been pointers to zero,
>now they're zero...

Bzzt.  Arrays and pointers are not always equivalent.  This code
defines an area of 4*IFNAMSIZ chars.  The old code then initialised
each IFNAMSIZ chars to the empty string (an array starting with '\0'),
not a pointer to an empty string.  Test file x.c.

#define IFNAMSIZ 7
static char name[4][IFNAMSIZ];
int main(void) { return(0); }

# gcc -g x.c -o x
# gdb x
(gdb) ptype name
type = char [4][7]
(gdb) x name[0]
0x80494f4 <name>:       0x00000000
(gdb) x name[1]
0x80494fb <name+7>:     0x00000000
(gdb) x name[2]
0x8049502 <name+14>:    0x00000000
(gdb) x name[3]
0x8049509 <name+21>:    0x00000000

Zero initialisation via bss works fine.  Try it with 
  static char name[4][IFNAMSIZ] = {"", "", "", ""};
and you get exactly the same results, at the expense of more disk space
and time to load.  Not much extra I know, but it all adds up.