strings initialized?

[programandala.net]

Yesterday I experienced a kind of coding poltergeist with the following simple function:

Code:

function strings(times as ubyte, text as string ) as string dim i as ubyte dim result as string for i = 1 to times let result = result + text next i return result end function

The program did strange things when printing the string returned by strings(): it printed other strings of the program that had nothing to do, and then froze. The reason was I had supposed the DIMed strings were initialized to an empty string but they are not; it took time to find out. When I added a simple line, everything worked as expected:

Code:

dim result as string let result = ""

I've searched in the forum, but found no reference about this. The DIM wiki page doesn't mention string initialitazion. I just want to confirm this issue before updating the wiki. Are strings not initialized to empty strings because of a technical issue or simply because it's not implemented yet? Is this definitive or will it change in the future?