Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] libcacard: remove useless initializers

[Markus Armbruster]

Michael Tokarev <address@hidden> writes:

> 11.05.2014 11:58, Alon Levy wrote:
>> On 05/08/2014 08:19 PM, Michael Tokarev wrote:
>>> libcacard has many functions which initializes local variables
>>> at declaration time, which are always assigned some values later
>>> (often right after declaration).  Clean up these initializers.
>> 
>> How is this an improvement? Doesn't the compiler ignore this anyhow?
>
> Just less code.
>
> To me, when I see something like
>
>   Type *var = NULL;
>
> in a function, it somehow "translates" to a construct like
>
>   Type *found = NULL;
>
> That is -- so this variable will be used either as an accumulator
> or a search result, so that initial value is really important.
>
> So when I see the same variable receives its initial value in
> the next line, I start wondering what's missed in the code which
> should be there.  Or why I don't read the code correctly.  Or
> something like this.
>
> So, basically, this is a cleanup patch just to avoid confusion,
> it most likely not needed for current compiler who can figure
> it out by its own.  And for consistency - why not initialize
> other variables too?

I hate redundant initializers for yet another reason: when I change the
code, and accidentally add a path bypassing the *real* initialization, I
don't get a "may be used uninitialized" warning, I get the stupid
redundant initialization and quite possibly a crash to debug some time
later.

> Maybe that's just my old-scool mind works this way.
>
> At any rate you can just ignore this patch.

Please consider it.