Is there a good reason to initialize a static variable on every call to the function where it is defined?

Question

A colleague is doing some code review, and he is seeing many static variable declarations similar to the following:

void someFunc(){

   static int foo;
   static int bar;
   static int baz;

   foo = 0;
   bar = 0;
   baz = 0;

   /* 
       rest of the function code goes here
   */

}

Our question is, Are the programmers who wrote this code simply unclear on the concept of a static variable, or is there some clever reason to do this on purpose?

If it makes any difference, the environment is an embedded microcontroller and the compiler is GCC.

Answer 1

If it were not an embedded system, you would probably be correct: I would bet that the programmers were unclear on the concept of the static, and must have meant to write this:

static int foo = 0;
static int bar = 0;
static int baz = 0;

However, in an embedded system they could have used static to avoid allocating the variables in the automatic storage (i.e. on the stack). This could save a few CPU cycles, because the address of the static variable would be "baked into" the binary code of the compiled method.

Answer 2

In this context the static memory is allocated only once. The problem with this code is the initialization. If it's being reset at every execution, these variables should exist on the stack.