linux-kernel - Re: drop overzealous ERROR: do not initialise statics to 0 or NULL from checkpatch.pl

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Message-ID: <520f0cf10808140142m387f59faka4287aef7d18a7ae@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:42:55 +0200
From:	"John Kacur" <jkacur@...il.com>
To:	"Guennadi Liakhovetski" <g.liakhovetski@....de>
Cc:	"Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@...db.de>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"Andy Whitcroft" <apw@...dowen.org>, rdunlap@...otime.net,
	jschopp@...tin.ibm.com
Subject: Re: drop overzealous ERROR: do not initialise statics to 0 or NULL from checkpatch.pl

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:19 PM, Guennadi Liakhovetski
<g.liakhovetski@....de> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2008, John Kacur wrote:
>
>> Could we drop this somewhat overzealous "ERROR: do not initialise
>> statics to 0 or NULL" from checkpatch.pl?
>>
>> Reasoning:
>> 1. This is not part of Documentation/CodingStyle
>> 2. K&R 2nd.ed do it (pg 83, static int bufp = 0;) The purpose is to
>> remove access to the bufp from external routines, and to avoid name
>> conflict)
>
> No, "static" "removes access to the bufp from external routines, and
> avoids name conflict", not the initialization to 0.
>

That is true, but the point is that even the folks who invented the
language don't have a problem with making the initialization explicit.
I'm not even trying to argue that folks should do it one way or the
other, I'm just saying it is unimportant, so let's drop it from
checkpatch.pl and save ourselves a lot of pointless code churn.
btw, see pg 94 of "The Practice of Programming" where the masters also
explicitly initialize statics.
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