CONCEPT initialisation DESCRIPTION There are two different flavours of initialisations, selectable in config.h at driver compile time: i) #undef INITIALIZATION_BY___INIT ------------------------------------ Initialisation is done at compile time. This is fast and costs no extra code in the program. Allowed expressions currently include integer literals, string literals, integer operators, string addition, bracketing, array constructors, the empty mapping and order_alist() . When an object with initialised variables is cloned or inherited, all initialised variables are copied from the blueprint. A special application of this feature is to have an initialised non-empty array or a mapping; it will be shared by all clones or inheriting objects unless an assignment to the variable - as opposed to an assignment to an element of the array/mapping - is done in all clones etc. To prevent unauthorised chenges in initialised arrays/mappings, you can declare the variables as ``private static'' or use a nomask reset/create that checks for undesired inheritance. ii) #define INITIALIZATION_BY___INIT ------------------------------------- Creates a function names __INIT() from all variable initialisations and from calls to __INIT() in all inherited objects, and runs this function at object creation time. Any efun can be used in the expressions for variable initialisations, even ones with severe side effects, like destruct() or shutdown() . The code created for __INIT() is a little worse than a medium-skilled lpc-programmer would generate, because it is scattered all over the program.