Extra bytes when declaring a member of a struct as uint32_t

Question

I have a problem when using the uint32_t type from the stdint.h library. If I run the following code (on Ubuntu linux 11.10 x86_64, g++ version 4.6.1):

#include          


        

Answer 1

Data types have different alignment requirements based on platform. The extra bytes are used to align one of the members of your structure to a particular size and/or position. IF you need more precise control, you can specify this alignment with __attribute__ or #pragma pack