Why do static arrays affect executable size?

[sarn via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Friday, 10 February 2017 at 15:12:28 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> Module-level and static variables all get put in the 
> executable. So, declaring a static array like that is going to 
> take up space. A dynamic array would do the same thing if you 
> gave it a value of that size. The same thing happens with 
> global and static variables in C/C++.

An important difference with C/C++ in this case is that D floats 
are initialised to NaN, not 0.0.  In binary (assuming IEEE 
floating point), 0.0 has an all-zero representation, but NaNs 
don't.  Therefore, in C/C++ (on most platforms), 
default-initialised floats can be allocated in the BSS segment, 
which doesn't take up executable space, but in D, 
default-initialised floats have to be put into the compiled 
binary.

If you explicitly initialise the array to all 0.0, you should see 
it disappear from the binary.