Compound literal and designated initializer warning from GCC but not Clang

Question

Compiling with gcc -std=c99 -Wextra this piece of code:

#include <stdio.h>

struct T {
    int a;
    int *b;
    int c;
};

int main(void)
{
    struct T t = {.b = ((int []){1, 1})};

    printf("%d\n", t.b[1]);
    return 0;
}

Is giving me a warning:

demo.c:11:12: warning: missing initializer for field ‘c’ of ‘struct T’ [-Wmissing-field-initializers]
     struct T t = {.b = ((int []){1, 1})};
            ^
demo.c:6:9: note: ‘c’ declared here
     int c;
         ^

But designated initializers are supposed to initialize to zero the rest of the members even if they are ommited.

Why the warning? (clang compiles the same piece of code without warnings)

gcc version 6.3.0 20170516 (Debian 6.3.0-18) 
clang version 3.8.1-24 (tags/RELEASE_381/final)

Answer 1

It looks like a gcc "consistency bug", here is the relevant code snippet in gcc/c/c-typeck.c

 7436   /* Warn when some struct elements are implicitly initialized to zero.  */
 7437   if (warn_missing_field_initializers
 7438       && constructor_type
 7439       && TREE_CODE (constructor_type) == RECORD_TYPE
 7440       && constructor_unfilled_fields)
 7441     {
 7442         bool constructor_zeroinit =
 7443          (vec_safe_length (constructor_elements) == 1
 7444           && integer_zerop ((*constructor_elements)[0].value));
 7445
 7446         /* Do not warn for flexible array members or zero-length arrays.  */
 7447         while (constructor_unfilled_fields
 7448                && (!DECL_SIZE (constructor_unfilled_fields)
 7449                    || integer_zerop (DECL_SIZE (constructor_unfilled_fields))))
 7450           constructor_unfilled_fields = DECL_CHAIN (constructor_unfilled_fields);
 7451
 7452         if (constructor_unfilled_fields
 7453             /* Do not warn if this level of the initializer uses member
 7454                designators; it is likely to be deliberate.  */
 7455             && !constructor_designated
 7456             /* Do not warn about initializing with ` = {0}'.  */
 7457             && !constructor_zeroinit)
 7458           {
 7459             if (warning_at (input_location, OPT_Wmissing_field_initializers,
 7460                             "missing initializer for field %qD of %qT",
 7461                             constructor_unfilled_fields,
 7462                             constructor_type))
 7463               inform (DECL_SOURCE_LOCATION (constructor_unfilled_fields),
 7464                       "%qD declared here", constructor_unfilled_fields);
 7465           }
 7466     }

The intent of the code appears to be to warn if any attribute constructor has an unfilled-field. The fact that you are not getting a warning on element 'a' is likely the "consistency bug" here.

If -Wextra is intended to turn on the missing initializers warning, then it has. The question is, should the "missing initializers warning" exclude omitted attributes? It seems that gcc and clang disagree about this - and it might be fine for them to?

This may not be the answer you are looking for .. but hope it helps with your understanding of the situation. :). GCC team has a consistency bug, but their code's intent seems to be warn in these cases, whereas clang, empirically, will not.