zeroing out memory

Question

gcc 4.4.4 C89

I am just wondering what most C programmers do when they want to zero out memory.

For example, I have a buffer of 1024 bytes. Sometimes I do this:<

Answer 1

I prefer using memset to clear a chunk of memory, especially when working with strings. I want to know without a doubt that there will be a null delimiter after my string. Yes, I know you can append a \0 on the end of each string and some functions do this for you, but I want no doubt that this has taken place.

A function could fail when using your buffer, and the buffer remains unchanged. Would you rather have a buffer of unknown garbage, or nothing?