memsetbuffervoid

Memsetbuffervoid is a utility function used in some C and C++ codebases to initialize an array of void pointer elements by filling every element with the same pointer value. It is conceptually similar to memset, but operates at the level of typed array elements (specifically void*), rather than raw bytes.

The typical prototype is void memsetbuffervoid(void **buffer, size_t count, void *value); This form expects buffer to point to a contiguous array of count elements of type void*. The function assigns buffer[i] = value for each index i from 0 to count-1. If buffer is NULL or count is zero, the function performs no operation. In most implementations, the function returns void, though some variants may return an int status code to indicate success or error.

Usage examples: If you have an array of void* pointers, such as void *slots[5]; calling memsetbuffervoid(slots, 5, somePointer); will set all five elements of slots to refer to the same object somePointer.

Relation to standard memset: While memset fills a buffer with a single byte value and is agnostic to element type, memsetbuffervoid fills an array of void* elements with a specific pointer value. It provides a type-safe way to initialize pointer arrays without writing an explicit loop in user code. However, it is not portable across all projects or languages, and its availability depends on the library or environment. For generic initialization of arbitrary types, a templated or loop-based approach is often preferred.

See also: memset, pointer array initialization, memory initialization utilities.