Question

I want to understand the layout of an object. So I executed with different orders of member variables. Everything came as expected, expect for following sequence.

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;
class Test1
{
public:
    int m_a;
    char m_b;
};


class Test
{
public:
    int m_b;
    Test1 m_t;
    char m_g;
    char m_c;
    char m_d;
    int m_e;
};

int main()
{
    Test t;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_b)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_t.m_a)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_t.m_b)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_c)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_d)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_e)<<endl;
    cout<<sizeof(t)<<endl;
}

Output:

0xbfebbd6c
0xbfebbd70
0xbfebbd74
0xbfebbd79
0xbfebbd7a
0xbfebbd7c
20

Where as I expected 16.

But If i remove m_a from Test1, it is giving expected input(12).

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;
class Test1
{
public:
    char m_b;
};


class Test
{
public:
    int m_b;
    Test1 m_t;
    char m_g;
    char m_c;
    char m_d;
    int m_e;
};

int main()
{
    Test t;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_b)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_t.m_b)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_c)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_d)<<endl;
    cout<<(int*)(&t.m_e)<<endl;
    cout<<sizeof(t)<<endl;
}

Output:

0xbf82e674
0xbf82e678
0xbf82e67a
0xbf82e67b
0xbf82e67c
12

Why there is the difference of 8 bytes if i remove integer which is exactly aligned to 4 bit boundary?

PS: I know this is implementation specific. I want to know how that implementation was done :). This was come into picture since i want to access private members, so trying to understand object layout !!!

Answer 1

With integer m_a sizeof(Test1) is 8 to align m_a to 4byte boundary. Without the int, it is only the size of th char.

class Test
{
public:
    int m_b;     // 4
    Test1 m_t;   // 12
    char m_g;    // 13
    char m_c;    // 14
    char m_d;    // 15

    int m_e;     // 20
};