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Compile-time check to make sure that there is no padding anywhere in a struct
(4 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
Lets consider the following task:
My C++ module as part of an embedded system receives 8 bytes of data, like: uint8_t data[8].
The value of the first byte determines the layout of the rest (20-30 different). In order to get the data effectively, I would create different structs for each layout and put each to a union and read the data directly from the address of my input through a pointer like this:
struct Interpretation_1 {
uint8_t multiplexer;
uint8_t timestamp;
uint32_t position;
uint16_t speed;
};
// and a lot of other struct like this (with bitfields, etc..., layout is not defined by me :( )
union DataInterpreter {
Interpretation_1 movement;
//Interpretation_2 temperatures;
//etc...
};
...
uint8_t exampleData[8] {1u, 10u, 20u,0u,0u,0u, 5u,0u};
DataInterpreter* interpreter = reinterpret_cast<DataInterpreter*>(&exampleData);
std::cout << "position: " << +interpreter->movement.position << "\n";
The problem I have is, the compiler can insert padding bytes to the interpretation structs and this kills my idea. I know I can use
with gcc: struct MyStruct{} __attribute__((__packed__));
with MSVC: I can use #pragma pack(push, 1) MyStruct{}; #pragma pack(pop)
with clang: ? (I could check it)
But is there any portable way to achieve this? I know c++11 has e.g. alignas for alignment control, but can I use it for this? I have to use c++11 but I would be just interested if there is a better solution with later version of c++.
But is there any portable way to achieve this?
No, there is no (standard) way to "make" a type that would have padding to not have padding in C++. All objects are aligned at least as much as their type requires and if that alignment doesn't match with the previous sub objects, then there will be padding and that is unavoidable.
Furthermore, there is another problem: You're accessing through a reinterpreted pointed that doesn't point to an object of compatible type. The behaviour of the program is undefined.
We can conclude that classes are not generally useful for representing arbitrary binary data. The packed structures are non-standard, and they also aren't compatible across different systems with different representations for integers (byte endianness).
There is a way to check whether a type contains padding: Compare the size of the sub objects to the size of the complete object, and do this recursively to each member. If the sizes don't match, then there is padding. This is quite tricky however because C++ has minimal reflection capabilities, so you need to resort either hard coding or meta programming.
Given such check, you can make the compilation fail on systems where the assumption doesn't hold.
Another handy tool is std::has_unique_object_representations (since C++17) which will always be false for all types that have padding. But note that it will also be false for types that contain floats for example. Only types that return true can be meaningfully compared for equality with std::memcmp.
Reading from unaligned memory is undefined behavior in C++. In other words, the compiler is allowed to assume that every uint32_t is located at a alignof(uint32_t)-byte boundary and every uint16_t is located at a alignof(uint16_t)-byte boundary. This means that if you somehow manage to pack your bytes portably, doing interpreter->movement.position will still trigger undefined behaviour.
(In practice, on most architectures, unaligned memory access will still work, but albeit incur a performance penalty.)
You could, however, write a wrapper, like how std::vector<bool>::operator[] works:
#include <cstdint>
#include <cstring>
#include <iostream>
#include <type_traits>
template <typename T>
struct unaligned_wrapper {
static_assert(std::is_trivial<T>::value);
std::aligned_storage_t<sizeof(T), 1> buf;
operator T() const noexcept {
T ret;
memcpy(&ret, &buf, sizeof(T));
return ret;
}
unaligned_wrapper& operator=(T t) noexcept {
memcpy(&buf, &t, sizeof(T));
return *this;
}
};
struct Interpretation_1 {
unaligned_wrapper<uint8_t> multiplexer;
unaligned_wrapper<uint8_t> timestamp;
unaligned_wrapper<uint32_t> position;
unaligned_wrapper<uint16_t> speed;
};
// and a lot of other struct like this (with bitfields, etc..., layout is not defined by me :( )
union DataInterpreter {
Interpretation_1 movement;
//Interpretation_2 temperatures;
//etc...
};
int main(){
uint8_t exampleData[8] {1u, 10u, 20u,0u,0u,0u, 5u,0u};
DataInterpreter* interpreter = reinterpret_cast<DataInterpreter*>(&exampleData);
std::cout << "position: " << interpreter->movement.position << "\n";
}
This would ensure that every read or write to the unaligned integer is transformed to a bytewise memcpy, which does not have any alignment requirement. There might be a performance penalty for this on architectures with the ability to access unaligned memory quickly, but it would work on any conforming compiler.
I'm porting an application from 32 bit to 64 bit.
It is C style coding (legacy product) although it is C++. I have an issue where a combination of union and struct are used to store values. Here a custom datatype called "Any" is used that should hold data of any basic datatype. The implementation of Any is as follows:
typedef struct typedvalue
{
long data; // to hold all other types of 4 bytes or less
short id; // this tells what type "data" is holding
short sign; // this differentiates the double value from the rest
}typedvalue;
typedef union Any
{
double any_any;
double any_double; // to hold double value
typedvalue any_typedvalue;
}Any;
The union is of size 8 bytes. They have used union so that at a given time there will only be one value and they have used struct to differentiate the type. You can store a double, long, string, char, float and int values at any given time. Thats the idea.
If its a double value, the value is stored in any_double. if its any other type, then its stored in "data" and the type of the value is stored in the "id". The "sign" would tell if value "Any" is holding a double or another type.
any_any is used liberally in the code to copy the value in the address space irrespective of the type. (This is our biggest problem since we do not know at a given time what it will hold!)
If its a string or pointer "Any" is suppose to hold, it is stored in "data" (which is of type long). In 64 bit, here is where the problem lies. pointers are 8 bytes. So we will need to change the "long" to an equivalent 8 byte (long long). But then that would increase the size of the union to 16 bytes and the liberal usage of "any_any" will cause problems. There are too many usage of "any_any" and you are never sure what it can hold.
I already tried these steps and it turned unsuccessful:
1. Changed the "long data" to "long long data" in the struct, this will make the size of the union to 16 bytes. - This will not allow the data to be passed as "any_any" (8 bytes).
2. Declared the struct as a pointer inside union. And changed the "long data" to "long long data" inside struct. - the issue encountered here was that, since its a pointer we need to allocate memory for the struct. The liberal use of "any_any" makes it difficult for us to allocate memory. Sometimes we might overwrite the memory and hence erase the value.
3. Create a separate collection that will hold the value for "data" (a key value pair). - This will not work because this implementation is at the core of application, the collection will run into millions of data.
Can anybody help me in this?
"Can anybody help me" this sounds like a cry of desperation, and I totally understand it.
Whoever wrote this code had absolutely no respect for future-proofing, or of portability, and now you're paying the price.
(Let this be a lesson to anyone who says "but our platform is 32bit! we will never use 64bit!")
I know you're going to say "but the codebase is too big", but you are better off rewriting the product. And do it properly this time!
Ignoring that fact that the original design is insane, you could use <stdint.h> (or soon <cstdint> to get a little bit of predictability:
struct typedvalue
{
uint16_t id;
uint16_t sign;
uint32_t data;
};
union any
{
char any_raw[8];
double any_double
typedvalue any_typedvalue;
};
You're still not guaranteed that typedvalue will be tightly packed, since there are no alignment guarantees for non-char members. You could make a struct Foo { char x[8]; }; and type-pun your way around, like *(uint32_t*)(&Foo.x[0]) and *(uint16_t*)(&Foo.x[4]) if you must, but that too would be extremely ugly.
If you are in C++0x, I would definitely throw in a static assertion somewhere for sizeof(typedvalue) == sizeof(double).
If you need to store both an 8 byte pointer and a "type" field then you have no choice but to use at least 9 bytes, and on a 64-bit system alignment will likely pad that out to 16 bytes.
Your data structure should look something like:
typedef struct {
union {
void *any_pointer;
double any_double;
long any_long;
int any_int;
} any;
char my_type;
} any;
If using C++0x consider using a strongly typed enumeration for the my_type field. In earlier versions the storage required for an enum is implementation dependent and likely to be more than one byte.
To save memory you could use (compiler specific) directives to request optimal packing of the data structure, but the resulting mis-aligned memory accesses may cause performance issues.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 12 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Difference between a Structure and a Union in C
I could understand what a struct means. But, i am bit confused with the difference between union and struct. Union is like a share of memory. What exactly it means.?
With a union, all members share the same memory. With a struct, they do not share memory, so a different space in memory is allocated to each member of the struct.
For example:
union foo
{
int x;
int y;
};
foo f;
f.x = 10;
printf("%d\n", f.y);
Here, we assign the value of 10 to foo::x. Then we output the value of foo::y, which is also 10 since x and y share the same memory. Note that since all members of a union share the same memory, the compiler must allocate enough memory to fit the largest member of the union. So a union containing a char and a long would need enough space to fit the long.
But if we use a struct:
struct foo
{
int x;
int y;
};
foo f;
f.x = 10;
f.y = 20;
printf("%d %d\n", f.x, f.y);
We assign 10 to x and 20 to y, and then print them both out. We see that x is 10 and y is 20, because x and y do not share the same memory.
EDIT: Also take note of Gman's comment above. The example I provided with the union is for demonstration purposes only. In practice, you shouldn't write to one data member of a union, and then access another data member. Usually this will simply cause the compiler to interpret the bit pattern as another type, but you may get unexpected results since doing this is undefined behavior.
I've used unions to convert bytes to and from other types. I find it easier than bit-shifting.
union intConverter {
int intValue;
struct {
byte hi;
byte lo;
} byteValue;
}
intConverter cv;
cv.intValue =1100;
printf("%X %X\n", cv.byteValue.hi, cv.byteValue.lo);
Where int is 16-bit (was used on a micro controller).
Each member of a union shares the same memory. That means if you change one, you change the others. And if the members are of different types, this can have unpredictable results. (not exactly unpredictable, but hard to predict unless you are aware of the underlying bit patterns that make up the data members).
It may be more useful to have an uncontrived example of what this is good for. (I say "uncontrived" because most bit-banging uses of union are extremely treacherous. Bit-banging unions taken from big-endian to little-endian hardware break in the most (initially) mystifying ways.) (Of course, I've written bit-banging unions to tear apart floating point numbers to implement orders-of-magnitude-faster-than-the-library math functions. I just add assertions about which members are supposed to have the same addresses.)
struct option1 { int type; /* other members */ };
struct option2 { int type; /* other members */ };
struct option3 { int type; /* other members */ };
union combo {
int type; // guaranteed to exactly overlap with the structs' ints type.
struct option1;
struct option2;
struct option3;
};
// ...
void foo(union combo *in) {
switch(in.type) {
case 1: { struct option1 *bar = in; //then process an option1 type of request }
case 2: { struct option2 *bar = in; //then process an option2 type of request }
case 3: { struct option3 *bar = in; //then process an option3 type of request }
}
This kind of construction is very common in X programming and other situations where one wishes to make a function that can receive many different types of messages (with different argument and layout requirements).
I suppose one way you can think of a union is that it is a set of aliases of varying type to a block of memory where each member of the union is an "alias" with a given type. Each alias refers to the same address in memory. How the bits at that address are interpreted are determined by the alias' type.
The amount of memory the union occupies is always equal to or possibly larger than the largest sized "member" of the union (due to alignment restrictions).
Run this program and find out the output.
#include < stdio.h >
int main()
{
union _testUnion
{
long long x;
long long y;
} testUnion;
struct _testStruct
{
long long x;
long long y;
}testStruct;
printf("Sizeof Union %d\n",sizeof(testUnion));
printf("Sizeof Struct %d\n",sizeof(testStruct));
return;
}
You will find that the size of struct is double than that of union. This is because union has allocated space for only one variable while struct has allocated for two.
Most answers here are correct. A union is essentially a way to access same data in different ways (For example, you can access/interpret 4 bytes of memory as 1 integers, or as 4 characters). Structs as you know are straightforward - a collection of different, seprate objects with their own memory.
Usually you require Unions at a much later stage in programming as compared to Structs.
I have learned but don't really get unions. Every C or C++ text I go through introduces them (sometimes in passing), but they tend to give very few practical examples of why or where to use them. When would unions be useful in a modern (or even legacy) case? My only two guesses would be programming microprocessors when you have very limited space to work with, or when you're developing an API (or something similar) and you want to force the end user to have only one instance of several objects/types at one time. Are these two guesses even close to right?
Unions are usually used with the company of a discriminator: a variable indicating which of the fields of the union is valid. For example, let's say you want to create your own Variant type:
struct my_variant_t {
int type;
union {
char char_value;
short short_value;
int int_value;
long long_value;
float float_value;
double double_value;
void* ptr_value;
};
};
Then you would use it such as:
/* construct a new float variant instance */
void init_float(struct my_variant_t* v, float initial_value) {
v->type = VAR_FLOAT;
v->float_value = initial_value;
}
/* Increments the value of the variant by the given int */
void inc_variant_by_int(struct my_variant_t* v, int n) {
switch (v->type) {
case VAR_FLOAT:
v->float_value += n;
break;
case VAR_INT:
v->int_value += n;
break;
...
}
}
This is actually a pretty common idiom, specially on Visual Basic internals.
For a real example see SDL's SDL_Event union. (actual source code here). There is a type field at the top of the union, and the same field is repeated on every SDL_*Event struct. Then, to handle the correct event you need to check the value of the type field.
The benefits are simple: there is one single data type to handle all event types without using unnecessary memory.
I find C++ unions pretty cool. It seems that people usually only think of the use case where one wants to change the value of a union instance "in place" (which, it seems, serves only to save memory or perform doubtful conversions).
In fact, unions can be of great power as a software engineering tool, even when you never change the value of any union instance.
Use case 1: the chameleon
With unions, you can regroup a number of arbitrary classes under one denomination, which isn't without similarities with the case of a base class and its derived classes. What changes, however, is what you can and can't do with a given union instance:
struct Batman;
struct BaseballBat;
union Bat
{
Batman brucewayne;
BaseballBat club;
};
ReturnType1 f(void)
{
BaseballBat bb = {/* */};
Bat b;
b.club = bb;
// do something with b.club
}
ReturnType2 g(Bat& b)
{
// do something with b, but how do we know what's inside?
}
Bat returnsBat(void);
ReturnType3 h(void)
{
Bat b = returnsBat();
// do something with b, but how do we know what's inside?
}
It appears that the programmer has to be certain of the type of the content of a given union instance when he wants to use it. It is the case in function f above. However, if a function were to receive a union instance as a passed argument, as is the case with g above, then it wouldn't know what to do with it. The same applies to functions returning a union instance, see h: how does the caller know what's inside?
If a union instance never gets passed as an argument or as a return value, then it's bound to have a very monotonous life, with spikes of excitement when the programmer chooses to change its content:
Batman bm = {/* */};
Baseball bb = {/* */};
Bat b;
b.brucewayne = bm;
// stuff
b.club = bb;
And that's the most (un)popular use case of unions. Another use case is when a union instance comes along with something that tells you its type.
Use case 2: "Nice to meet you, I'm object, from Class"
Suppose a programmer elected to always pair up a union instance with a type descriptor (I'll leave it to the reader's discretion to imagine an implementation for one such object). This defeats the purpose of the union itself if what the programmer wants is to save memory and that the size of the type descriptor is not negligible with respect to that of the union. But let's suppose that it's crucial that the union instance could be passed as an argument or as a return value with the callee or caller not knowing what's inside.
Then the programmer has to write a switch control flow statement to tell Bruce Wayne apart from a wooden stick, or something equivalent. It's not too bad when there are only two types of contents in the union but obviously, the union doesn't scale anymore.
Use case 3:
As the authors of a recommendation for the ISO C++ Standard put it back in 2008,
Many important problem domains require either large numbers of objects or limited memory
resources. In these situations conserving space is very important, and a union is often a perfect way to do that. In fact, a common use case is the situation where a union never changes its active member during its lifetime. It can be constructed, copied, and destructed as if it were a struct containing only one member. A typical application of this would be to create a heterogeneous collection of unrelated types which are not dynamically allocated (perhaps they are in-place constructed in a map, or members of an array).
And now, an example, with a UML class diagram:
The situation in plain English: an object of class A can have objects of any class among B1, ..., Bn, and at most one of each type, with n being a pretty big number, say at least 10.
We don't want to add fields (data members) to A like so:
private:
B1 b1;
.
.
.
Bn bn;
because n might vary (we might want to add Bx classes to the mix), and because this would cause a mess with constructors and because A objects would take up a lot of space.
We could use a wacky container of void* pointers to Bx objects with casts to retrieve them, but that's fugly and so C-style... but more importantly that would leave us with the lifetimes of many dynamically allocated objects to manage.
Instead, what can be done is this:
union Bee
{
B1 b1;
.
.
.
Bn bn;
};
enum BeesTypes { TYPE_B1, ..., TYPE_BN };
class A
{
private:
std::unordered_map<int, Bee> data; // C++11, otherwise use std::map
public:
Bee get(int); // the implementation is obvious: get from the unordered map
};
Then, to get the content of a union instance from data, you use a.get(TYPE_B2).b2 and the likes, where a is a class A instance.
This is all the more powerful since unions are unrestricted in C++11. See the document linked to above or this article for details.
One example is in the embedded realm, where each bit of a register may mean something different. For example, a union of an 8-bit integer and a structure with 8 separate 1-bit bitfields allows you to either change one bit or the entire byte.
Herb Sutter wrote in GOTW about six years ago, with emphasis added:
"But don't think that unions are only a holdover from earlier times. Unions are perhaps most useful for saving space by allowing data to overlap, and this is still desirable in C++ and in today's modern world. For example, some of the most advanced C++ standard library implementations in the world now use just this technique for implementing the "small string optimization," a great optimization alternative that reuses the storage inside a string object itself: for large strings, space inside the string object stores the usual pointer to the dynamically allocated buffer and housekeeping information like the size of the buffer; for small strings, the same space is instead reused to store the string contents directly and completely avoid any dynamic memory allocation. For more about the small string optimization (and other string optimizations and pessimizations in considerable depth), see... ."
And for a less useful example, see the long but inconclusive question gcc, strict-aliasing, and casting through a union.
Well, one example use case I can think of is this:
typedef union
{
struct
{
uint8_t a;
uint8_t b;
uint8_t c;
uint8_t d;
};
uint32_t x;
} some32bittype;
You can then access the 8-bit separate parts of that 32-bit block of data; however, prepare to potentially be bitten by endianness.
This is just one hypothetical example, but whenever you want to split data in a field into component parts like this, you could use a union.
That said, there is also a method which is endian-safe:
uint32_t x;
uint8_t a = (x & 0xFF000000) >> 24;
For example, since that binary operation will be converted by the compiler to the correct endianness.
Some uses for unions:
Provide a general endianness interface to an unknown external host.
Manipulate foreign CPU architecture floating point data, such as accepting VAX G_FLOATS from a network link and converting them to IEEE 754 long reals for processing.
Provide straightforward bit twiddling access to a higher-level type.
union {
unsigned char byte_v[16];
long double ld_v;
}
With this declaration, it is simple to display the hex byte values of a long double, change the exponent's sign, determine if it is a denormal value, or implement long double arithmetic for a CPU which does not support it, etc.
Saving storage space when fields are dependent on certain values:
class person {
string name;
char gender; // M = male, F = female, O = other
union {
date vasectomized; // for males
int pregnancies; // for females
} gender_specific_data;
}
Grep the include files for use with your compiler. You'll find dozens to hundreds of uses of union:
[wally#zenetfedora ~]$ cd /usr/include
[wally#zenetfedora include]$ grep -w union *
a.out.h: union
argp.h: parsing options, getopt is called with the union of all the argp
bfd.h: union
bfd.h: union
bfd.h:union internal_auxent;
bfd.h: (bfd *, struct bfd_symbol *, int, union internal_auxent *);
bfd.h: union {
bfd.h: /* The value of the symbol. This really should be a union of a
bfd.h: union
bfd.h: union
bfdlink.h: /* A union of information depending upon the type. */
bfdlink.h: union
bfdlink.h: this field. This field is present in all of the union element
bfdlink.h: the union; this structure is a major space user in the
bfdlink.h: union
bfdlink.h: union
curses.h: union
db_cxx.h:// 4201: nameless struct/union
elf.h: union
elf.h: union
elf.h: union
elf.h: union
elf.h:typedef union
_G_config.h:typedef union
gcrypt.h: union
gcrypt.h: union
gcrypt.h: union
gmp-i386.h: union {
ieee754.h:union ieee754_float
ieee754.h:union ieee754_double
ieee754.h:union ieee854_long_double
ifaddrs.h: union
jpeglib.h: union {
ldap.h: union mod_vals_u {
ncurses.h: union
newt.h: union {
obstack.h: union
pi-file.h: union {
resolv.h: union {
signal.h:extern int sigqueue (__pid_t __pid, int __sig, __const union sigval __val)
stdlib.h:/* Lots of hair to allow traditional BSD use of `union wait'
stdlib.h: (__extension__ (((union { __typeof(status) __in; int __i; }) \
stdlib.h:/* This is the type of the argument to `wait'. The funky union
stdlib.h: causes redeclarations with either `int *' or `union wait *' to be
stdlib.h:typedef union
stdlib.h: union wait *__uptr;
stdlib.h: } __WAIT_STATUS __attribute__ ((__transparent_union__));
thread_db.h: union
thread_db.h: union
tiffio.h: union {
wchar.h: union
xf86drm.h:typedef union _drmVBlank {
Unions are useful when dealing with byte-level (low level) data.
One of my recent usage was on IP address modeling which looks like below :
// Composite structure for IP address storage
union
{
// IPv4 # 32-bit identifier
// Padded 12-bytes for IPv6 compatibility
union
{
struct
{
unsigned char _reserved[12];
unsigned char _IpBytes[4];
} _Raw;
struct
{
unsigned char _reserved[12];
unsigned char _o1;
unsigned char _o2;
unsigned char _o3;
unsigned char _o4;
} _Octet;
} _IPv4;
// IPv6 # 128-bit identifier
// Next generation internet addressing
union
{
struct
{
unsigned char _IpBytes[16];
} _Raw;
struct
{
unsigned short _w1;
unsigned short _w2;
unsigned short _w3;
unsigned short _w4;
unsigned short _w5;
unsigned short _w6;
unsigned short _w7;
unsigned short _w8;
} _Word;
} _IPv6;
} _IP;
Unions provide polymorphism in C.
An example when I've used a union:
class Vector
{
union
{
double _coord[3];
struct
{
double _x;
double _y;
double _z;
};
};
...
}
this allows me to access my data as an array or the elements.
I've used a union to have the different terms point to the same value. In image processing, whether I was working on columns or width or the size in the X direction, it can become confusing. To alleve this problem, I use a union so I know which descriptions go together.
union { // dimension from left to right // union for the left to right dimension
uint32_t m_width;
uint32_t m_sizeX;
uint32_t m_columns;
};
union { // dimension from top to bottom // union for the top to bottom dimension
uint32_t m_height;
uint32_t m_sizeY;
uint32_t m_rows;
};
The union keyword, while still used in C++031, is mostly a remnant of the C days. The most glaring issue is that it only works with POD1.
The idea of the union, however, is still present, and indeed the Boost libraries feature a union-like class:
boost::variant<std::string, Foo, Bar>
Which has most of the benefits of the union (if not all) and adds:
ability to correctly use non-POD types
static type safety
In practice, it has been demonstrated that it was equivalent to a combination of union + enum, and benchmarked that it was as fast (while boost::any is more of the realm of dynamic_cast, since it uses RTTI).
1Unions were upgraded in C++11 (unrestricted unions), and can now contain objects with destructors, although the user has to invoke the destructor manually (on the currently active union member). It's still much easier to use variants.
A brilliant usage of union is memory alignment, which I found in the PCL(Point Cloud Library) source code. The single data structure in the API can target two architectures: CPU with SSE support as well as the CPU without SSE support. For eg: the data structure for PointXYZ is
typedef union
{
float data[4];
struct
{
float x;
float y;
float z;
};
} PointXYZ;
The 3 floats are padded with an additional float for SSE alignment.
So for
PointXYZ point;
The user can either access point.data[0] or point.x (depending on the SSE support) for accessing say, the x coordinate.
More similar better usage details are on following link: PCL documentation PointT types
From the Wikipedia article on unions:
The primary usefulness of a union is
to conserve space, since it provides a
way of letting many different types be
stored in the same space. Unions also
provide crude polymorphism. However,
there is no checking of types, so it
is up to the programmer to be sure
that the proper fields are accessed in
different contexts. The relevant field
of a union variable is typically
determined by the state of other
variables, possibly in an enclosing
struct.
One common C programming idiom uses
unions to perform what C++ calls a
reinterpret_cast, by assigning to one
field of a union and reading from
another, as is done in code which
depends on the raw representation of
the values.
In the earliest days of C (e.g. as documented in 1974), all structures shared a common namespace for their members. Each member name was associated with a type and an offset; if "wd_woozle" was an "int" at offset 12, then given a pointer p of any structure type, p->wd_woozle would be equivalent to *(int*)(((char*)p)+12). The language required that all members of all structures types have unique names except that it explicitly allowed reuse of member names in cases where every struct where they were used treated them as a common initial sequence.
The fact that structure types could be used promiscuously made it possible to have structures behave as though they contained overlapping fields. For example, given definitions:
struct float1 { float f0;};
struct byte4 { char b0,b1,b2,b3; }; /* Unsigned didn't exist yet */
code could declare a structure of type "float1" and then use "members" b0...b3 to access the individual bytes therein. When the language was changed so that each structure would receive a separate namespace for its members, code which relied upon the ability to access things multiple ways would break. The values of separating out namespaces for different structure types was sufficient to require that such code be changed to accommodate it, but the value of such techniques was sufficient to justify extending the language to continue supporting it.
Code which had been written to exploit the ability to access the storage within a struct float1 as though it were a struct byte4 could be made to work in the new language by adding a declaration: union f1b4 { struct float1 ff; struct byte4 bb; };, declaring objects as type union f1b4; rather than struct float1, and replacing accesses to f0, b0, b1, etc. with ff.f0, bb.b0, bb.b1, etc. While there are better ways such code could have been supported, the union approach was at least somewhat workable, at least with C89-era interpretations of the aliasing rules.
Lets say you have n different types of configurations (just being a set of variables defining parameters). By using an enumeration of the configuration types, you can define a structure that has the ID of the configuration type, along with a union of all the different types of configurations.
This way, wherever you pass the configuration can use the ID to determine how to interpret the configuration data, but if the configurations were huge you would not be forced to have parallel structures for each potential type wasting space.
One recent boost on the, already elevated, importance of the unions has been given by the Strict Aliasing Rule introduced in recent version of C standard.
You can use unions do to type-punning without violating the C standard.
This program has unspecified behavior (because I have assumed that float and unsigned int have the same length) but not undefined behavior (see here).
#include <stdio.h>
union float_uint
{
float f;
unsigned int ui;
};
int main()
{
float v = 241;
union float_uint fui = {.f = v};
//May trigger UNSPECIFIED BEHAVIOR but not UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR
printf("Your IEEE 754 float sir: %08x\n", fui.ui);
//This is UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR as it violates the Strict Aliasing Rule
unsigned int* pp = (unsigned int*) &v;
printf("Your IEEE 754 float, again, sir: %08x\n", *pp);
return 0;
}
I would like to add one good practical example for using union - implementing formula calculator/interpreter or using some kind of it in computation(for example, you want to use modificable during run-time parts of your computing formulas - solving equation numerically - just for example).
So you may want to define numbers/constants of different types(integer, floating-point, even complex numbers) like this:
struct Number{
enum NumType{int32, float, double, complex}; NumType num_t;
union{int ival; float fval; double dval; ComplexNumber cmplx_val}
}
So you're saving memory and what is more important - you avoid any dynamic allocations for probably extreme quantity(if you use a lot of run-time defined numbers) of small objects(compared to implementations through class inheritance/polymorphism). But what's more interesting, you still can use power of C++ polymorphism(if you're fan of double dispatching, for example ;) with this type of struct. Just add "dummy" interface pointer to parent class of all number types as a field of this struct, pointing to this instance instead of/in addition to raw type, or use good old C function pointers.
struct NumberBase
{
virtual Add(NumberBase n);
...
}
struct NumberInt: Number
{
//implement methods assuming Number's union contains int
NumberBase Add(NumberBase n);
...
}
struct NumberDouble: Number
{
//implement methods assuming Number's union contains double
NumberBase Add(NumberBase n);
...
}
//e.t.c. for all number types/or use templates
struct Number: NumberBase{
union{int ival; float fval; double dval; ComplexNumber cmplx_val;}
NumberBase* num_t;
Set(int a)
{
ival=a;
//still kind of hack, hope it works because derived classes of Number dont add any fields
num_t = static_cast<NumberInt>(this);
}
}
so you can use polymorphism instead of type checks with switch(type) - with memory-efficient implementation(no dynamic allocation of small objects) - if you need it, of course.
From http://cplus.about.com/od/learningc/ss/lowlevel_9.htm:
The uses of union are few and far between. On most computers, the size
of a pointer and an int are usually the same- this is because both
usually fit into a register in the CPU. So if you want to do a quick
and dirty cast of a pointer to an int or the other way, declare a
union.
union intptr { int i; int * p; };
union intptr x; x.i = 1000;
/* puts 90 at location 1000 */
*(x.p)=90;
Another use of a union is in a command or message protocol where
different size messages are sent and received. Each message type will
hold different information but each will have a fixed part (probably a
struct) and a variable part bit. This is how you might implement it..
struct head { int id; int response; int size; }; struct msgstring50 { struct head fixed; char message[50]; } struct
struct msgstring80 { struct head fixed; char message[80]; }
struct msgint10 { struct head fixed; int message[10]; } struct
msgack { struct head fixed; int ok; } union messagetype {
struct msgstring50 m50; struct msgstring80 m80; struct msgint10
i10; struct msgack ack; }
In practice, although the unions are the same size, it makes sense to
only send the meaningful data and not wasted space. A msgack is just
16 bytes in size while a msgstring80 is 92 bytes. So when a
messagetype variable is initialized, it has its size field set
according to which type it is. This can then be used by other
functions to transfer the correct number of bytes.
Unions provide a way to manipulate different kind of data in a single area of storage without embedding any machine independent information in the program
They are analogous to variant records in pascal
As an example such as might be found in a compiler symbol table manager, suppose that a
constant may be an int, a float, or a character pointer. The value of a particular constant
must be stored in a variable of the proper type, yet it is most convenient for table management if the value occupies the same amount of storage and is stored in the same place regardless of its type. This is the purpose of a union - a single variable that can legitimately hold any of one of several types. The syntax is based on structures:
union u_tag {
int ival;
float fval;
char *sval;
} u;
The variable u will be large enough to hold the largest of the three types; the specific size is implementation-dependent. Any of these types may be assigned to u and then used in
expressions, so long as the usage is consistent
The VS documentation states
Half the size of a pointer. Use within a structure that contains a pointer and two small fields.
Windows Data Types
What, exactly, is this type and how is it used, if ever?
Note: Anonymous structs are not standard, but MSVC takes them:
union
{
int * aPointer
struct
{
HALF_PTR lowerBits;
HALF_PTR upperBits;
};
} myvar; //You can be assured this union is sizeof(int *)
If you're thinking they're not too terribly useful, you would be right.
I found this article on Intel's site, and it they suggest using it in a context where you have a class with many pointer members, along with a 32-bit offset to get the actual address, to cut down on data bloat of a class. The article specifically talks about the Itanium platform because it uses 64-bit pointers instead of 32-bit, but I assume the problem/solution to the problem would be the same on any system using 64-bit pointers.
So in short, it seems to suggest that it can be used if you, for example, wish to reduce the memory footprint of a class?
Use within a structure that contains a pointer and two small fields.
This means that in the following structure, no padding is required:
struct Example {
void* pointer;
HALF_PTR one;
HALF_PTR two;
};
Of course, this is only relevant if the size of HALF_PTR (32 bits on a 64-bit system, 16 bits on a 32-bit system) is sufficient to hold the intended values.
I guess “Use within a structure that contains a pointer and two small fields” means a pointer constructed from two HALF_PTRs along with two other non-pointer small data fields
struct Packed {
HALF_PTR low_ptr;
HALF_PTR high_ptr;
SMALL one;
SMALL two;
};
struct Padded {
void *ptr;
SMALL one;
SMALL two;
};
On 32-bit Windows:
When SMALL is char: sizeof(Packed) == 6 but sizeof(Padded) = 8
When SMALL is short: the size of both structs are 8, but the alignment requirement for the former is just 2 compared to 4
On 64-bit Windows:
When SMALL is char: sizeof(Packed) == 10 but sizeof(Padded) = 16
When SMALL is short: sizeof(Packed) == 12 but sizeof(Padded) = 16
When SMALL is int: same size, but reduced alignment requirement like above
This is unlike Philipp's answer where the size and alignment of the struct is exactly the same whether splitting into half or not
struct Example1 {
void* pointer;
HALF_PTR one;
HALF_PTR two;
};
struct Example2 {
void* pointer;
void* one_two;
};
Both have alignment equal to the size of the pointer, and size of 2 pointers