Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comment reappeared, and while you're right about using proper libraries to handle data, it doesn't excuse the "undefined behavior (uninitialized local variables)" that I still see all the time despite all the warning and error flags that can be fed to the compiler. Most of the time, the programmers who do this do not follow the simple rule that Stroustrup said which is to define or initialize a variable where you…
While it doesn't excuse the bad habits, we do have to keep in mind C++98 (or whatever more ancient was used back then) didn't have the simple initializers we now take for granted. You couldn't just do 'Type myStruct = {};' to null-initialize it, you had to manually NULL all nested fields. God forbid you change the order of the variables in the struct if you're nesting them and forget to update it everywhere. It was j…
struct test {
int my_int = 0;
int* my_ptr = std::nullptr;
};
You cannot initialize them with a different value unless you also write a constructor, but it not the issue here (since you are supposed to read them from the file system)