«

Hello,

Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?

Tnaks for your replies and your time

Vincent De Groote

Vincent De Groote wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
> the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?

Yes. More precisely, it states that you can convert
a pointer to the struct to a pointer of the first element's
type and use it to access the first element, or you can
convert a pointer to the first element to the struct's
type and use it to access the struct.

--
Eric Sosman
lid

Vincent De Groote wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
> the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?

The standard guarantees that "A pointer to a structure object,
suitably converted, points to its initial member (or if that member is
a bit-field, then to the unit in which it resides), and vice versa.
There may be unnamed
padding within a structure object, but not at its
beginning." (6.7.2.1p13)

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:15:37 +0200, Vincent De Groote wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
> the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?

Hi Vincent,

I think I can answer this one... No, I dont believe it does, because there
can be "padding bytes" inserted between fields of a struct, also at the
beginning and the end.

E.g. if the first field is a char and the second field is an int, the
compiler will fill out the struct so that the char is one of the bytes
in a full dword (or qword on 64bit) - and it could be any one of the bytes
(which one may depend on endianness of the machine?? but that's just a
guess).

Cheers,
Joe


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Vincent De Groote wrote:
>
> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure
> and the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?

Yes.

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Try the download section.

kid joe <> writes:
> On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:15:37 +0200, Vincent De Groote wrote:
>> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
>> the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?
>
> I think I can answer this one... No, I dont believe it does, because there
> can be "padding bytes" inserted between fields of a struct, also at the
> beginning and the end.
[...]

No, that's incorrect. The standard very specifically does *not*
permit padding before the first member of a struct.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst- <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:16:12 -0700, Keith Thompson wrote:
> kid joe <> writes:
>> On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:15:37 +0200, Vincent De Groote wrote:
>>> Does the C89/c90 language asserts that the address of a structure and
>>> the address of the first field of the structure are the same ?
>>
>> I think I can answer this one... No, I dont believe it does, because there
>> can be "padding bytes" inserted between fields of a struct, also at the
>> beginning and the end.
> [...]
>
> No, that's incorrect. The standard very specifically does *not*
> permit padding before the first member of a struct.

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the correction.

I find that strange... if I was a compiler writer on an endianness where
the least-significant byte was at the top end of the word, my thought to
implement a struct with char followed by int, Id allocate a whole dword
for the char, just do native-width integer operations on the dword, then
access and set the char through an 0xFF mask. But it sounds like that
wouldnt be standards-compliant.

Cheers,
Joe


--

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` Good Afternoon! , /\_ _| | .-'_|
`................, _\__`[_______________| _| (_|
] [ \, ][ ][ (_|

In article <gteqma$eev$>, kid joe <> wrote:
....
>Hi Keith,
>
>Thanks for the correction.

Please, sir. Could I have some more?

>I find that strange... if I was a compiler writer on an endianness where
>the least-significant byte was at the top end of the word, my thought to
>implement a struct with char followed by int, Id allocate a whole dword
>for the char, just do native-width integer operations on the dword, then
>access and set the char through an 0xFF mask. But it sounds like that
>wouldnt be standards-compliant.

The way it is usually done is to put the padding *before* the beginning
of the struct - i.e., so that the struct is aligned to the type of its
first element.

In article <gteqma$eev$>, kid joe <> wrote:
>On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:16:12 -0700, Keith Thompson wrote:

>I find that strange... if I was a compiler writer on an endianness where
>the least-significant byte was at the top end of the word,

.... and where there was no equally efficient instruction for accessing
the high-order byte...

>my thought to
>implement a struct with char followed by int, Id allocate a whole dword
>for the char, just do native-width integer operations on the dword, then
>access and set the char through an 0xFF mask. But it sounds like that
>wouldnt be standards-compliant.

Correct. C's rules do not always permit the most efficient layout of
data. But there are other considerations in standardisation, such as
existing programs that rely on being able to convert the address of
a structure to the address of its first member.

Your case is probably not a common one.

-- Richard
--
Please remember to mention me / in tapes you leave behind.

On Fri, 1 May 2009 13:26:43 +0000 (UTC),
(Kenny McCormack) wrote:

>In article <gteqma$eev$>, kid joe <> wrote:
>...
>>Hi Keith,
>>
>>Thanks for the correction.
>
>Please, sir. Could I have some more?
>
>>I find that strange... if I was a compiler writer on an endianness where
>>the least-significant byte was at the top end of the word, my thought to
>>implement a struct with char followed by int, Id allocate a whole dword
>>for the char, just do native-width integer operations on the dword, then
>>access and set the char through an 0xFF mask. But it sounds like that
>>wouldnt be standards-compliant.
>
>The way it is usually done is to put the padding *before* the beginning
>of the struct - i.e., so that the struct is aligned to the type of its
>first element.

The structure must be aligned and padding inserted as needed
everywhere except before the first member so that every member is
properly aligned.

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