Does libstruct initialize all structure fields to zero?

Can I count on libstruct to initialize all structure fields to zero? It appears to do this for the simple test case below, but I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, or guaranteed behavior. The example is a slightly modified version of the example from the libstruct documentation.

My end use case has a large number of structures, and it would nice if I didn't need to worry about initializing everything to zero.

if ~libisloaded('shrlibsample')
    addpath(fullfile(matlabroot,'extern','examples','shrlib'))
    loadlibrary('shrlibsample')
end
sc = libstruct('c_struct');
disp([sc.p1, sc.p2, sc.p3])

     0     0     0

Answer 1

[Umang Pandey]

Hi,

In MATLAB, when you create a structure that corresponds to a C struct using "libstruct", MATLAB initializes the numeric fields of the structure to default values, which for numeric types is zero.

However, for maximum reliability and to ensure that the code behaves as expected, it is recommended to explicitly initialize all fields, as demonstrated in the example below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/using-the-libstruct-object.html

This practice can help prevent any unexpected behavior or deal with any special cases where the initialization might differ.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Umang