K&R App A, par. 8 & 8.2, on Declarations, Defaulting.

[John Bruner]

Allowing automatic variables to be declared with "x = 1;" instead of
"int x = 1;" can produce ambiguities.  Consider

int *p = &something;			int *p = &something;

func()					func()
{					{
	*p = 0;					int *p = 0;
	return(p);				return(p);
}					}

This should not treat "*p = 0;" as an automatic variable definition;
rather, it must be interpreted as a reference to the global "p".

Also, "int *p = 0;" does not do the same thing as "int *p; *p = 0;".
The first case sets "p" to NULL, the second case sets the integer
pointed-to by (the garbage) pointer "p" to zero.
-- 
  John Bruner (S-1 Project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
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