offsetof — offset of a structure member
#include <stddef.h>
size_t offsetof( |
type, | |
member) ; |
The macro offsetof
() returns
the offset of the field member
from the start of the
structure type
.
This macro is useful because the sizes of the fields that compose a structure can vary across implementations, and compilers may insert different numbers of padding bytes between fields. Consequently, an element's offset is not necessarily given by the sum of the sizes of the previous elements.
A compiler error will result if member
is not aligned to a byte
boundary (i.e., it is a bit field).
offsetof
() returns the
offset of the given element within the given type, in units
of bytes.
On a Linux/i386 system, when compiled using the default gcc(1) options, the program below produces the following output:
$ ./a.out offsets: i=0; c=4; d=8 a=16 sizeof(struct s)=16
#include <stddef.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main(void) { struct s { int i; char c; double d; char a[]; }; /* Output is compiler dependent */ printf("offsets: i=%ld; c=%ld; d=%ld a=%ld\n", (long) offsetof(struct s, i), (long) offsetof(struct s, c), (long) offsetof(struct s, d), (long) offsetof(struct s, a)); printf("sizeof(struct s)=%ld\n", (long) sizeof(struct s)); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }
This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages
project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting
bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Copyright (C) 2006 Justin Pryzby <pryzbyjjustinpryzby.com> and Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpagesgmail.com> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. References: /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.1.1/include/stddef.h glibc-doc |