C++ Data Member Alignment and Array Packing

Question

During a code review I've come across some code that defines a simple structure as follows:

class foo {
   unsigned char a;
   unsigned char b;
   unsigned char c;
}

Elsewhere, an array of these objects is defined:

foo listOfFoos[SOME_NUM];

Later, the structures are raw-copied into a buffer:

memcpy(pBuff,listOfFoos,3*SOME_NUM);

This code relies on the assumptions that: a.) The size of foo is 3, and no padding is applied, and b.) An array of these objects is packed with no padding between them.

I've tried it with GNU on two platforms (RedHat 64b, Solaris 9), and it worked on both.

Are the assumptions above valid? If not, under what conditions (e.g. change in OS/compiler) might they fail?

Answer 1

An array of objects is required to be contiguous, so there's never padding between the objects, though padding can be added to the end of an object (producing nearly the same effect).

Given that you're working with char's, the assumptions are probably right more often than not, but the C++ standard certainly doesn't guarantee it. A different compiler, or even just a change in the flags passed to your current compiler could result in padding being inserted between the elements of the struct or following the last element of the struct, or both.