diff --git a/src/check-symsorting.pl b/src/check-symsorting.pl
index c523c34b21..f360dfb69f 100755
--- a/src/check-symsorting.pl
+++ b/src/check-symsorting.pl
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ my $lastgroup = undef;
 foreach my $symfile (@ARGV) {
     open SYMFILE, $symfile or die "cannot read $symfile: $!";
 
-    my $line;
+    my $line = 0;
     my $groupfile = "";
     my @group;