Re: List of all-zero .data variables in linux-2.4.3 available

Pavel Machek (pavel@suse.cz)
Mon, 16 Apr 2001 14:33:21 +0000


Hi!

> > I am aware of a couple of cases where code relied on static
> > variables being allocated contiguously, but, in both cases, those
> > variables were either all zeros or all non-zeros, so my proposed
> > change would not break such code.
>
> Continuous placement is not the only property defined by
> initialization. There are many more. You cannot change this since it
> will quite a few programs and libraries and subtle and hard to
> impossible to identify ways. Simply educate programmers to not
> initialize.

Unless ansiC specifies such behaviour, such code is buggy. And buggy
code should be fixed, not be used as argument against optimalization.
[Of course, you can turn off that optimalization for buggy code, if code
is too ugly to fix.]

-- 
Philips Velo 1: 1"x4"x8", 300gram, 60, 12MB, 40bogomips, linux, mutt,
details at http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/velo/index.html.

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/