C# Variable Initialization Question

Question

Is there any difference on whether I initialize an integer variable like:

int i = 0;
int i;

Does the compiler or CLR treat this as the same

Answer 1

As the following link states, they are exactly the same:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa664742%28VS.71%29.aspx

Answer 2

Various responses here are kind of misleading, including the referenced article in "Coding Horror" website.

The compiler will optimize your code to remove all "unnecessary" initializations when configured to optimize the generated code. Please notice that this is the default behavior when compiling in "Release" mode.

I, for one, think it's always very useful to initialize all your variables. The performance hit will be minimal in debug mode and none in release mode, but the gains of explicitly set the variables will be tremendous for anyone maintaining the code in the future, in the better "documenting code with code" style. I remember this very experienced coworker of mine that thought that the default value of Int32 was Int32.MinValue instead of 0. These types of confusion always happens to things implicited in the code and, to me, they should be avoided in most cases.