C++ struct alignment question

Question

I have a predefined struct (actually several) where variables span across 32-bit word boundary. In Linux (and Windows using GCC) I am able to get my structs to pack to the

Answer 1

If it absoloutely defnitely needs to be 6 bytes then define it as 3 shorts and get the data out yourself ... it won't slow things down ... the compiler is just doing this anyway ...