From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) Subject: Re: IMPORTANT [BUG in 0.99] Re: [ANNOUNCE]: linux version 0.99 Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 22:23:24 GMT
>Just curious - I haven't got the .99 sources yet, but why is an explicit
>initialiser needed here. A static pointer ought to be initialised to
>NULL in the executable already?
In normal C programs, yes, but the kernel is a bit special. Like, for
instance, who is going to do the initialization? Normally it is the
kernel (which zeroes out all memory before it is given to a user
process), the linker (which loads the pre-initialized variables from a
file, i.e. those variables which are given an explicit initializer),
and possbily the C startup code. Trouble is, none of these are active
when the kernel is booting...