OFFSETOF(3)		   Linux Programmers Manual		  OFFSETOF(3)



NAME
       offsetof - offset of a structure member

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       size_t offsetof(type, member);

DESCRIPTION
       The  macro  offsetof()  returns the offset of the field member from the
       start of the structure type.

       This macro is useful because the sizes of the  fields  that  compose  a
       structure  can  vary  across  implementations, and compilers may insert
       different numbers of padding bytes between  fields.   Consequently,  an
       elements  offset  is  not necessarily given by the sum of the sizes of
       the previous elements.

       A compiler error will result if member is not aligned to a byte	bound
       ary (i.e., it is a bit field).

RETURN VALUE
       offsetof()  returns  the  offset  of  the given member within the given
       type, in units of bytes.

CONFORMING TO
       C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.

EXAMPLE
       On a Linux/i386 system, when compiled using the default gcc(1) options,
       the program below produces the following output:

	   $ ./a.out
	   offsets: i=0; c=4; d=8 a=16
	   sizeof(struct s)=16

       #include 
       #include 
       #include 

       int
       main(void)
       {
	   struct s {
	       int i;
	       char c;
	       double d;
	       char a[];
	   };

	   /* Output is compiler dependent */

	   printf("offsets: i=%ld; c=%ld; d=%ld a=%ld\n",
		   (long) offsetof(struct s, i),
		   (long) offsetof(struct s, c),
		   (long) offsetof(struct s, d),
		   (long) offsetof(struct s, a));
	   printf("sizeof(struct s)=%ld\n", (long) sizeof(struct s));

	   exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.05 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting  bugs,  can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



GNU				  2008-07-12			   OFFSETOF(3)