Does increasing the size of array guarantees that new elements are initialized to default value?

Question

I get an error when trying to initialize array inside a struct of an array and I find this post: https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/4115 .

It seems that I have to work around by increasing the size of the outer array by 1 and fill the value by hand. But does it guarantees that the newly appeared elements are initialized properly to the default value of their types? And, without explicit memory reservation which is often required in other similar languages, will the array overlap with other data?

Answer 1

And, without explicit memory reservation which is often required is other similar languages, will the array overlap with other data?

It's practically impossible for your array overlapping other data in your smart-contract. You can read more here as why.

When you expand a dynamically sized array by increasing its length, it will allocate space for the type of the object your array holds and the value(s) will be already initialized to 0.

You can try it out with this. Open it in remix and increase the array's length at will and use the getter for the array.

pragma solidity ^0.5.0;


contract Contract {

    struct Everything {
        uint a;
        bytes32 b;
        bool c;
        address d;
    }

    Everything[] public my_array;

    function expand() public {
        my_array.length++;
    }
}