Re: Coding style question

> > Shouldn't we turn on warnings by the compiler on uninitialized
> > variables? This can also be helpful.
>
> Those warnings should already be enabled, at least with GCC.

Yes, the compiler can detect unitialized variables,

But, that introduces a new problem. There are a lot of tools out there
(like GCC) that can find unitialized variables (or more specifically,
variables which are used before initialization). I've seen too many
less-scarred developers add an " = NULL" to quiet down the tool. But
that's (arguably) worse than leaving the variable uninitialized - if you
simply initialize a variable to a known (but not correct) value, you've
disabled the tool; it can't help you find improperly initialized
variables anymore. The variable has a value, but you still don't know
at which point in time it has a correct value.

That's another reason I prefer initializers (and nested variable
declarations) - I can put off creating the variable until I can assign a
meaningful value to it. (I don't go so far as to introduce artificial
scopes just for the sake of nesting variable declarations).

Too many scars...

-- Korry