Proper way to initialize a string in C

Question

I\'ve seen people\'s code as:

char *str = NULL;

and I\'ve seen this is as well,

char *str;

I\'m wonder, what

Answer 1

this is a general question about c variables not just char ptrs.

It is considered best practice to initialize a variable at the point of declaration. ie

char *str = NULL;

is a Good Thing. THis way you never have variables with unknown values. For example if later in your code you do

if(str != NULL)
 doBar(str);

What will happen. str is in an unknown (and almost certainly not NULL) state

Note that static variables will be initialized to zero / NULL for you. Its not clear from the question if you are asking about locals or statics