How to initialize array to 0 in C?

Global variables and static variables are automatically initialized to zero. If you have simply

char ZEROARRAY[1024];

at global scope it will be all zeros at runtime. But actually there is a shorthand syntax if you had a local array. If an array is partially initialized, elements that are not initialized receive the value 0 of the appropriate type. You could write:

char ZEROARRAY[1024] = {0};

The compiler would fill the unwritten entries with zeros. Alternatively you could use memset to initialize the array at program startup:

memset(ZEROARRAY, 0, 1024);

That would be useful if you had changed it and wanted to reset it back to all zeros.

If you'd like to initialize the array to values other than 0, with gcc you can do:

int array[1024] = { [ 0 ... 1023 ] = -1 };

This is a GNU extension of C99 Designated Initializers. In older GCC, you may need to use -std=gnu99 to compile your code.