clearing a char array c

Question

I thought by setting the first element to a null would clear the entire contents of a char array.

char my_custom_data[40] = \"Hello!\";
my_custom_data[0] = \         


        

Answer 1

Nope. All you are doing is setting the first value to '\0' or 0.

If you are working with null terminated strings, then in the first example, you'll get behavior that mimics what you expect, however the memory is still set.

If you want to clear the memory without using memset, use a for loop.