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

If you want to ensure that every member of the array is explicitly initialized, just omit the dimension from the declaration:

int myArray[] = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 };

The compiler will deduce the dimension from the initializer list. Unfortunately, for multidimensional arrays only the outermost dimension may be omitted:

int myPoints[][3] = { { 1, 2, 3 }, { 4, 5, 6 }, { 7, 8, 9} };

is OK, but

int myPoints[][] = { { 1, 2, 3 }, { 4, 5, 6 }, { 7, 8, 9} };

is not.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

There is a fast way to initialize array of any type with given value. It works very well with large arrays. Algorithm is as follows:

• initialize first element of the array (usual way)
• copy part which has been set into part which has not been set, doubling the size with each next copy operation

---

For 1 000 000 elements int array it is 4 times faster than regular loop initialization (i5, 2 cores, 2.3 GHz, 4GiB memory, 64 bits):

loop runtime 0.004248 [seconds]

memfill() runtime 0.001085 [seconds]

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <string.h>
#define ARR_SIZE 1000000

void memfill(void *dest, size_t destsize, size_t elemsize) {
   char   *nextdest = (char *) dest + elemsize;
   size_t movesize, donesize = elemsize;

   destsize -= elemsize;
   while (destsize) {
      movesize = (donesize < destsize) ? donesize : destsize;
      memcpy(nextdest, dest, movesize);
      nextdest += movesize; destsize -= movesize; donesize += movesize;
   }
}    
int main() {
    clock_t timeStart;
    double  runTime;
    int     i, a[ARR_SIZE];

    timeStart = clock();
    for (i = 0; i < ARR_SIZE; i++)
        a[i] = 9;    
    runTime = (double)(clock() - timeStart) / (double)CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
    printf("loop runtime %f [seconds]\n",runTime);

    timeStart = clock();
    a[0] = 10;
    memfill(a, sizeof(a), sizeof(a[0]));
    runTime = (double)(clock() - timeStart) / (double)CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
    printf("memfill() runtime %f [seconds]\n",runTime);
    return 0;
}

Answer 4

Nobody has mentioned the index order to access the elements of the initialized array. My example code will give an illustrative example to it.

#include <iostream>

void PrintArray(int a[3][3])
{
    std::cout << "a11 = " << a[0][0] << "\t\t" << "a12 = " << a[0][1] << "\t\t" << "a13 = " << a[0][2] << std::endl;
    std::cout << "a21 = " << a[1][0] << "\t\t" << "a22 = " << a[1][1] << "\t\t" << "a23 = " << a[1][2] << std::endl;
    std::cout << "a31 = " << a[2][0] << "\t\t" << "a32 = " << a[2][1] << "\t\t" << "a33 = " << a[2][2] << std::endl;
    std::cout << std::endl;
}

int wmain(int argc, wchar_t * argv[])
{
    int a1[3][3] =  {   11,     12,     13,     // The most
                        21,     22,     23,     // basic
                        31,     32,     33  };  // format.

    int a2[][3] =   {   11,     12,     13,     // The first (outer) dimension
                        21,     22,     23,     // may be omitted. The compiler
                        31,     32,     33  };  // will automatically deduce it.

    int a3[3][3] =  {   {11,    12,     13},    // The elements of each
                        {21,    22,     23},    // second (inner) dimension
                        {31,    32,     33} };  // can be grouped together.

    int a4[][3] =   {   {11,    12,     13},    // Again, the first dimension
                        {21,    22,     23},    // can be omitted when the 
                        {31,    32,     33} };  // inner elements are grouped.

    PrintArray(a1);
    PrintArray(a2);
    PrintArray(a3);
    PrintArray(a4);

    // This part shows in which order the elements are stored in the memory.
    int * b = (int *) a1;   // The output is the same for the all four arrays.
    for (int i=0; i<9; i++)
    {
        std::cout << b[i] << '\t';
    }

    return 0;
}

The output is:

a11 = 11                a12 = 12                a13 = 13
a21 = 21                a22 = 22                a23 = 23
a31 = 31                a32 = 32                a33 = 33

a11 = 11                a12 = 12                a13 = 13
a21 = 21                a22 = 22                a23 = 23
a31 = 31                a32 = 32                a33 = 33

a11 = 11                a12 = 12                a13 = 13
a21 = 21                a22 = 22                a23 = 23
a31 = 31                a32 = 32                a33 = 33

a11 = 11                a12 = 12                a13 = 13
a21 = 21                a22 = 22                a23 = 23
a31 = 31                a32 = 32                a33 = 33

11      12      13      21      22      23      31      32      33

Answer 5

I saw some code that used this syntax:

char* array[] = 
{
    [0] = "Hello",
    [1] = "World"
};   

Where it becomes particularly useful is if you're making an array that uses enums as the index:

enum
{
    ERR_OK,
    ERR_FAIL,
    ERR_MEMORY
};

#define _ITEM(x) [x] = #x

char* array[] = 
{
    _ITEM(ERR_OK),
    _ITEM(ERR_FAIL),
    _ITEM(ERR_MEMORY)
};   

This keeps things in order, even if you happen to write some of the enum-values out of order.

More about this technique can be found here and here.