Both readability and style have to do much with this.
The style has a historical background which is a slight
technical merit. It results in a smaller executable file, as C
compilers traditionally placed file-scope static variables that
are not explicitly initialized in the BSS section, instead of
explicitly storing N-bytes of zero as the the initial data in it
(although I do not see a reason for compilers not to do the same
for variables explicitly initialized to zero. In fact, I think
modern gcc produces the same allocation with or without "= 0"
Please send a rewritten replacement version as a single patch
that is cleanly applicable to 'next', and mention people whose
input helped you in polishing the patch in the proposed commit
log message.
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