How to initialize all members of an array to the same value?

Question

I have a large array in C (not C++ if that makes a difference). I want to initialize all members of the same value.

I could swear I

Answer 1

For statically initializing a large array with the same value, without multiple copy-paste, you can use macros:

#define VAL_1X     42
#define VAL_2X     VAL_1X,  VAL_1X
#define VAL_4X     VAL_2X,  VAL_2X
#define VAL_8X     VAL_4X,  VAL_4X
#define VAL_16X    VAL_8X,  VAL_8X
#define VAL_32X    VAL_16X, VAL_16X
#define VAL_64X    VAL_32X, VAL_32X

int myArray[53] = { VAL_32X, VAL_16X, VAL_4X, VAL_1X };

If you need to change the value, you have to do the replacement at only one place.

Edit: possible useful extensions

(courtesy of Jonathan Leffler)

You can easily generalize this with:

#define VAL_1(X) X
#define VAL_2(X) VAL_1(X), VAL_1(X)
/* etc. */

A variant can be created using:

#define STRUCTVAL_1(...) { __VA_ARGS__ }
#define STRUCTVAL_2(...) STRUCTVAL_1(__VA_ARGS__), STRUCTVAL_1(__VA_ARGS__)
/*etc */ 

that works with structures or compound arrays.

#define STRUCTVAL_48(...) STRUCTVAL_32(__VA_ARGS__), STRUCTVAL_16(__VA_ARGS__)

struct Pair { char key[16]; char val[32]; };
struct Pair p_data[] = { STRUCTVAL_48("Key", "Value") };
int a_data[][4] = { STRUCTVAL_48(12, 19, 23, 37) };

macro names are negotiable.