Special Fields

There are two types of special fields: unused data and alignments.

Unused Data

The unused keyword may be used in a structure or a bit structure, and lets you skip data which is not used or just not important. The declaration syntax is

unused[number];

where number the number of bytes or bits to skip. In the following example

struct DocumentRecord {
  byte enum { Complete, NeedsReview, OutOfDate } Status;
  unused[3];
  FILETIME CreationTime;
  char szName[];
};

three bytes at offsets 1 to 3 contain no useful data and should be skipped.

The unused keyword serves the same purpose in bit structures except it forces skipping bits, not bytes:

byte bitstruct FlagByte {
  unused[1];
  Valid[1];
  Locked[1];
  unused[2];
  nLocks[3];
};

Alignments

The alignment directive can occur within a structure definition and has two forms:

align address[number]
align offset[number]

The number in the square brackets specifies alignment of the next field. The first form aligns the address of the field when the structure is mapped; the second form aligns the offset from the start of the structure. The offset alignment does not depend on structure mapping unless some previous field is of a variable size.

struct DocumentRecord {
  byte enum { Complete, NeedsReview, OutOfDate } Status;
  align offset [4];	// Align to doubleword boundary
  FILETIME CreationTime;
  char szName[];
};

The size of the alignment operator varies from 0 to number minus 1. The alignment value may be any positive value, not necessarily a power of two.