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

The end result is identical (so long as you assume that 0 is always represented by all-zero-bits), so it's largely a matter of style. Personally, I prefer value initialisation, since it is simpler and doesn't require function calls.

Incidentally, you must initialise at least one member:

STRUCT theStruct = {0};

Omitting the 0 is allowed by some C compilers, but not by the C standard. C++ allows the omission, but I prefer to just always use the 0.