WG14 liaison statement concerning ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT

The C++ CD contains the following statement:

A program that uses an object of type atomic_flag without initializing it with the macro ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT is ill-formed.

A type for which explicit initialization is necessary is not unprecedented for C++; reference types and class types with an explicitly-declared constructor but no default constructor are examples. However, a requirement like this would be unprecedented for C, which has no kind of type for which explicit initialization is required.

The rationale for the requirement of ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT is that, even though effectively all architectures usable in multi-processor systems have instructions suitable for implementing atomic_flag operations, there are some for which a zero-valued object would correspond to a flag in the set state, rather than a flag in the reset state. So a zero-initialized atomic_flag object will be in a different initial state on different architectures. However, this is not a fatal condition, since it still possible to initialize an atomic_flag by using atomic_flag_reset.

Therefore, it is more appropriate for the C standard simply to state the reality implied by the variety of existing hardware:

An atomic_flag that is not explicitly initialized with ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT is initially in an indeterminate state.

For the sake of compatibility between C and C++, WG21 should consider making the same change to the C++ standard.