Re: To Initialise or not

[Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com>]

Steve O'Neill wrote:
> 
> > As an aside, I always write ":= null;" when I want to *rely* on the
> > initial value of a pointer, even though I know that pointers are always
> > default-initialized to null.
> 
> You're not the only one. :)

I think I'm the only person in the world that _doesn't_ like this coding
style. I don't like it because I can't find a use for it. Generally, I only want
to enter information if there's some use for it, either to make the
program work, or to make it more readable, etc. Otherwise, I'm just adding another
source for error (suppose, for example, there's an object called mull, nell,
etc. of a compatible type and scope, and I make a typo?)

Some people say that initializing to null adds a hint to the reader that
it's an access. That seems (a) kind of redundant, since I should always use the
type of the object for such information, and (b) kind of dangerous, since
initial values for access types aren't always "null". If I use the keyword
to look for access values, I'll miss some.