floating point - nan initializers

[Ben Hinkle]

"Dave" <Dave_member at pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:dt85ll$2vis$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>
> Rational: nan will propogate through an entire calculation if the 
> developer
> forgets to initialize a floating point variable.
[snip]
> Maybe I'm wrong.. Opinions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> - Dave

I'm with you that nan initializer is annoying. The archives have some 
discussions on the topic - with Walter's replies. My own approach would be 
to use 0 initializer, toss 'auto' and introduce that := operator that came 
up recently that I talk about every now and then. The benefit of := is that 
*you* supply the initialization so the whole issue of worying about the 
default initializer is much less common. For example instead of
 double x;
and wondering what the initial value is (if any) one writes
 x := 0.0;
and you're done. Multiple variables are declared-and-inited using
 x := y := z := 0.0;

-Ben

ps. I hope people aren't annoyed by this plug but := is in Cx 
http://www.cxlang.org