and then use it to initialize the hash field of an object_id struct.
That hash field is exactly 32 bytes long (the size we need for sha256).
But the string literal above is actually 33 bytes long due to the NUL
terminator. This is legal in C, and the NUL is ignored.
Side note on legality: in general excess initializer elements are
forbidden, and gcc will warn on both of these:
I couldn't find specific language in the standard allowing
initialization from a string literal where _just_ the NUL is ignored,
but C99 section 6.7.8 (Initialization), paragraph 32 shows this exact
case as "example 8".
However, the upcoming gcc 15 will start warning for this case (when
compiled with -Wextra via DEVELOPER=1):
CC object-file.o
object-file.c:52:9: warning: initializer-string for array of ‘unsigned char’ is too long [-Wunterminated-string-initialization]
52 | "\x6e\xf1\x9b\x41\x22\x5c\x53\x69\xf1\xc1" \
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
object-file.c:79:17: note: in expansion of macro ‘EMPTY_TREE_SHA256_BIN_LITERAL’
which is understandable. Even though this is not a bug for us, since we
do not care about the NUL terminator (and are just using the literal as
a convenient format), it would be easy to accidentally create an array
that was mistakenly unterminated.
We can avoid this warning by switching the initializer to an actual
array of unsigned values. That arguably demonstrates our intent more
clearly anyway.
Reported-by: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>