title: Use of Curly Brackets (Braces) Around a variable C++
body: <p>I'm learning 2D arrays in my programming class.  My teacher used something without explaining it and I was curious why we used it.  Since it has to do with a symbol I'm not sure how to google or search for it, as these symbols are used in the search itself.  Anyways the code was this:</p>
  
  <p><code>int small[26]= {0}, large[26]={0}, i;</code></p>
  
  <p>Why are the curly braces needed around the 0's?</p>
  
  <p>The program this code is a part of examines a file and looks for each letter of the alphabet and counts them individually.</p>