diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 863c1fbf..968de818 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 2009-11-26 Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org>
 	* winio.c (edit_scroll): Adjust for long lines when scrolling.
+	* rcfile.c (parse_rcfile), initialize size argument to getline(), fixes crash on FreeBSD 
+	  reported by Eitan Adler <eitanadlerlist@gmail.com>.
 
 2009-11-26 Jordi Mallach <jordi@gnu.org>
 	* doc/man/*: Update all man pages to escape unescapred hyphens.
diff --git a/src/rcfile.c b/src/rcfile.c
index 2bd67a67..4aa5894f 100644
--- a/src/rcfile.c
+++ b/src/rcfile.c
@@ -892,7 +892,7 @@ void parse_rcfile(FILE *rcstream
 {
     char *buf = NULL;
     ssize_t len;
-    size_t n;
+    size_t n = 0;
 
     while ((len = getline(&buf, &n, rcstream)) > 0) {
 	char *ptr, *keyword, *option;