Initialize/reset struct to zero/null

Question

struct x {
    char a[10];
    char b[20];
    int i;
    char *c;
    char *d[10];
};

I am filling this struct and then using the values. On the n

Answer 1

In C, it is a common idiom to zero out the memory for a struct using memset:

struct x myStruct;
memset(&myStruct, 0, sizeof(myStruct));

Technically speaking, I don't believe that this is portable because it assumes that the NULL pointer on a machine is represented by the integer value 0, but it's used widely because on most machines this is the case.

If you move from C to C++, be careful not to use this technique on every object. C++ only makes this legal on objects with no member functions and no inheritance.