#pragma pack(n)

#pragma pack(n)

Non-Confidential

ARM DUI0375E

ARM® Compiler v5.04 for µVision armcc User Guide

Version 5

Home > Compiler-specific Features > #pragma pack(n)

9.91 #pragma pack(n)

This pragma aligns members of a structure to the minimum of n and their natural alignment. Packed objects are read and written using unaligned accesses.

Note

This pragma is a GNU compiler extension that the ARM compiler supports.

Syntax

#pragma pack(n)

Where:

n

is the alignment in bytes, valid alignment values being 1, 2, 4 and 8.

Default

The default is #pragma pack(8).

Errors

Taking the address of a field in a #pragma packed struct does not yield a __packed pointer, so the compiler does not produce an error if you assign this address to a non-__packed pointer. However, the field might not be properly aligned for its type, and dereferencing such an unaligned pointer results in undefined behavior.

Examples

This example demonstrates how pack(2) aligns integer variable b to a 2-byte boundary.

typedef struct
{ 
    char a;
    int b;
} S;
#pragma pack(2)
typedef struct
{ 
    char a;
    int b;
} SP;
S var = { 0x11, 0x44444444 };
SP pvar = { 0x11, 0x44444444 };

The layout of S is:

Figure 9-1 Nonpacked structure S

 

 

The layout of SP is:

Figure 9-2 Packed structure SP

 

 

Note

In this layout, x denotes one byte of padding.

SP is a 6-byte structure. There is no padding after b.