> I agree with you, but it'd be nicer if it were easier to figure this out from the standard --- either I'm missing something or else you have to infer it from

> I agree with you, but it'd be nicer if it were easier to figure this out from the standard --- either I'm missing something or else you have to infer it from reading between the lines: > So, on a platform with strict alignment, in order to achieve contiguous packing of structures (required by the last) and to achieve each structure member having a valid pointer (required by the first) the implementation must add enough optional padding (allowed by the middle) to make the size of the structure aligned. It's not in the standard per se. It's a requirement for machine code to function on certain platforms. The standard basically just says that in all cases compilers have to generate machine code that works properly. It is imposed by the designers of the processor, not the C standard. > I believe the parent is referring to the int8_t, int16_t types rather than the implementation-defined int, short, long types here. This is indeed what I was talking about.