7 replies to this topic

[Uninverted]

What's the 'best' way to make all of the elements in an array null (in terms of efficiency and simplicity)? The first thing I thought of was a loop, like, say,

while (array[i] != "") {
  array[i] = "";
}

But that doesn't really seem right for some reason. I though of using { }, but I'm not sure how that would work, exactly. Any ideas?

[broncoslb]

Well it sort of depends on the type of the array. If your using chars or ptrs then something like this should be efficient:

int i=0;

while(array[i] != NULL){

    array[i] = NULL;

    i++;

}

[dargueta]

Just call ZeroMemory(pointer,size)

[v0id]

Watch out with the ZeroMemory-function, because it's a Win32 API function. It's probably a good alternative, if you're on Windows, but won't work on other platforms.

I would use the standard-C function, memset. I don't know about how efficient it is, though.

#include <string.h>
// ...
memset(my_array, '\0', sizeof(my_array[0]) / sizeof(my_array));

[TkTech]

memset is very efficient.

[dargueta]

v0id: your code won't work - the last parameter should be sizeof(my_array) / sizeof(my_array[0]). Sorry, I'm anal-retentive.

[v0id]

Yes.

[Rothzael]

I dynamically create them and then use free();