=====memset=====
Syntax:

<code>
    #include <cstring>
    void* memset( void* buffer, int ch, size_t count );
</code>

The function memset copies ''ch'' into the first ''count'' characters of ''buffer'', and
returns ''buffer''. memset is useful for intializing a section of memory to some
value. For example, this command:

<code>
     const int ARRAY_LENGTH = 300;
     char the_array[ARRAY_LENGTH];
     ...
     // zero out the contents of the_array
     memset( the_array, '\0', ARRAY_LENGTH );
</code>

...is a very efficient way to set all values of ''the_array'' to zero.

The table below compares two different methods for initializing an array of
characters: a for-loop versus memset. As the size of the data being
initialized increases, memset clearly gets the job done much more quickly:

^ Input size ^ Initialized with a for-loop ^ Initialized with memset() ^
| 1000       | 0.016                       | 0.017                     |
| 10000      | 0.055                       | 0.013                     |
| 100000     | 0.443                       | 0.029                     |
| 1000000    | 4.337                       | 0.291                     |


Related Topics: [[memcmp]], [[memcpy]], [[memmove]]