What is "initialization"

alt. 1 (context uncountable English) The process of preparing something to begin. 2 (context countable English) An act of preparing something to begin. 3 (context programming English) An assignment of an initial value for a data object or variable n. 1 (context uncountable English) The process of preparing something to begin. 2 (context countable English) An act of preparing something to begin. 3 (context programming English) An assignment of an initial value for a data object or variable

n. (computer science) the format of sectors on the surface of a hard disk drive so that the operating system can access them and setting a starting position [syn: low-level formatting, initialisation]

Initialization may refer to:

• Booting, a process that starts computer operating systems
• Initialism, an abbreviation formed using the initial letters of words or word parts
• In computing, formatting a storage medium like a hard disk or memory. Also, making sure a device is available to the operating system.
• Initialization (programming)

In computer programming, initialization is the assignment of an initial value for a data object or variable. The manner in which initialization is performed depends on programming language, as well as type, storage class, etc., of an object to be initialized. Programming constructs which perform initialization are typically called initializers and initializer lists. Initialization is distinct from (and preceded by) declaration, although the two can sometimes be conflated in practice. The complement of initialization is finalization, which is primarily used for objects, but not variables.

Initialization is done either by statically embedding the value at compile time, or else by assignment at run time. A section of code that performs such initialization is generally known as "initialization code" and may include other, one-time-only, functions such as opening files; in object-oriented programming, initialization code may be part of a constructor (class method) or an initializer (instance method). Setting a memory location to hexadecimal zeroes is also sometimes known as "clearing" and is often performed by an exclusive or instruction (both operands specifying the same variable), at machine code level, since it requires no additional memory access.