hi Andrew, I was talking about warning option called -Wuninitialized Here in the below code, compiler gives warning like " might be used uninitialized in this function" for x , { int x; switch (y) { case 1: x = 1; break; case 2: x = 4; break; case 3: x = 5; } foo (x); } If the value code{y} is always 1, 2 or 3, then code{x} is always initialized, but GCC doesn't know this. So it emits a warning. My question was, if I am going to initialize the variable x to some value. is that going to help for the compiler to perform better optimization, without giving ant warnings Sharath. On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 7:19 PM, Andrew Haley <aph@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > J M Sharath Bharadwaj bharadwaj wrote: >> >> hi All, >> >> Is GCC going to perform a better optimization, if I am going to >> initialize the variable explicitly. I am asking this because I was >> reading the GCC online doc for warning options like as in >> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/info2www?(gcc.info)Warning%20Options > > This is a strange question. > > If you read an uninitialized variable your program contains undefined > behaviour, and optimization is going to be the least of your problems. > If you don't read from an uninitialized variable it doesn't matter. > > Andrew. >