Leaving variables uninitialized in certain cases helps to achieve top-notch performance. Sometimes compiler thinks that variable may be used uninitialized (whereas it may not) and emits a warning.

To silence these warnings there is LINT_INIT() macro:

#if defined(_lint) || defined(FORCE_INIT_OF_VARS) || \

    (defined(__GNUC__) && defined(__cplusplus))

#define LINT_INIT(var) var= 0

#else

#define LINT_INIT(var)

#endif

It always emits "x= 0" for C++ code compiled with gcc. In fact this is a workaround for gcc bug, which was fixed 3 years ago.