How to tell gcc to disable padding inside struct?

Question

I’m unsure on whether it’s normal or it’s a compiler bug but I have a C struct with lot of members. Among of them, there’s, :

struct list {
    ...  
    ...
    const unsigned char nop=0x90; // 27 bytes since the begining of the structure
    const unsigned char jump=0xeb; // 28 bytes since the begining of the structure
    const unsigned char hlt=0xf4; // 29 bytes since the begining of the structure
    unsigned __int128 i=0xeb90eb90eb90eb90f4f4 // should start at the 30th byte, but get aligned on a 16 byte boundary and starts on the 32th byte instead
    const unsigned char data=0x66; // should start at the 46th byte, but start on the 48th instead.
}; // end of struct list.

I had a hard time to find out why my program wasn’t working, but I finally found there’s a 2 bytes gap between hltand i which is set to 0x0. This means that the i is getting aligned.
This is very clear when I printf that part of the structure, because with :

for(int i=28;i<35;i++)
    printf("%02hhX",buf[i]);

I get EBF40000EB90EB90 on the screen.

I tried things like volatile struct list data;in my program, but it didn’t changed the alignment problem.

So is there a #pragma or a __attribute__to tell gcc to not align i inside struct listtype ?

Answer 1

In GCC you can use __attribute__((packed)) like this:

// sizeof(x) == 8
struct x
{
    char x;
    int a;
};

// sizeof(y) == 5
struct y
{
    char x;
    int a;
} __attribute__((packed));

See doc.

Also if you rely on the addresses of struct fields, take a look at the offsetof macro. Maybe you don't need to pack the structure at all.