Optimal structure field ordering

[00704a-Liber]

In article <164 at navtech.uucp> mark at navtech.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes:

>	"The space requirement of any given C structure may be easily
>	optimized by reorganizing the structure fields in order of decreasing
>	base type size."

This is not (necessarily) true!  For iinstance:

sizeof(long) === 8
sizeof(short) === 5
sizeof(char) === 1

Also suppose that alignment for shorts and longs occurs on even addresses
(two byte boundaries), while chars can align on single byte boundaries.

With your method, a structure containing 1 long, 2 short, and 2 char would
be decalred in the following way:

struct mark
{
	long	long1;
	short	short1;
	short	short2;
	char	char1;
	char	char2;
};

would take up 8 (long) + 5 (short) + 1 (fill) + 5 (short) + 1 (char)
	+ 1 (char) = 21 bytes.

If it is declared as:

struct nevin
{
	long	long1;
	short	short1;
	char	char1;
	short	short2;
	char	char2;
}

would only take up 20 bytes, since no fill byte is needed.
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