Just to close the loop here, it looks like that is exactly what zig does for pointers, such that there is a different type of pointer for each combination of bi

Just to close the loop here, it looks like that is exactly what zig does for pointers, such that there is a different type of pointer for each combination of bit offsets and byte alignments, and yes it is distinct from a "regular" pointer (of which there isn't one "regular" type either, but also many separate flavors, including C-compatible, single-item, and many-item): https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#toc-packed-struct https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#toc-packed-struct