linux-kernel - Re: checkpatch.pl and statics

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Date:	Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:34:25 +0200
From:	Benny Halevy <bhalevy@...asas.com>
To:	Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@...mix.at>
CC:	Andreas Westin XX <andreas.xx.westin@...csson.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: checkpatch.pl and statics

On Mar. 13, 2008, 17:43 +0200, Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@...mix.at> wrote:
> On Don, 2008-03-13 at 16:09 +0100, Andreas Westin XX wrote:
> [....]
>> I ran checkpatch.pl on a piece of code I wrote and besides all the other
>> warnings/errors it complained about a static pointer being initialised
>> to NULL/0. I fixed it but I'm curious as to why this is not permitted ?
> 
> Because "uninitialized" data is automatically initialized wit 0. An
> explicit initialization with 0/NULL wastes space in the kernel image.

gcc (at least version >= 4.1.2) seems to smarter than that. It
doesn't seem to put data initialized to zero in the initialized data
segment but rather adds it to the uninitialized data. That said,
initializing statically allocated data to zero is superfluous in C
and should be avoided for style/elegance reasons as well.

Benny

> 
> 	Bernd

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