Any reason to prefer memset/ZeroMemory to value initialization for WinAPI structs?

Question

In Win32 programming a handful of POD structs is used. Those structs often need to be zeroed out before usage.

This can be done by calling memset()/

Answer 1

I always use:

STRUCT theStruct = {}; // for C++, in C use {0}

It's shorter, standard, therefore more elegant, and I don't really care about the theoretical differences. We are talking about code for a concrete OS here.

Another advantage is you can also immediately set the struct size in the first member like this:

STRUCT theStruct = {sizeof(STRUCT)}; 

Many Win32 structs require you to set the size in a first member.