Static array initialisation

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 3/31/21 2:03 PM, DLearner wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 March 2021 at 18:00:32 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

>> The answer is no, the compiler does not write to memory beyond the 100 
>> elements. That memory *might* happen to have an 8 in there. That's not 
>> proof of anything though.
>>
> I entirely agree - I wasn't saying anything was wrong, but I _was_ 
> surprised.
> Not least because it's not chance, I changed the initial value and the 
> effect repeated with the new value.

It's by chance, the only correlation is probably that you are looking at 
stack data that was set up to call the function that initialized the 
static array. Maybe it's saving some registers and the register happens 
to contain 8 (not surprising).

Or some other reason. Again, you are looking at data that the array 
doesn't own, and therefore the compiler can put anything in there, it 
could be 42 on another compiler, on another platform, or maybe if you 
call some other functions first, it changes.

-Steve