Bitfields and Unions in C giving problems

Question

I am implementing a radio standard and have hit a problem with unions in structure and memory size. In the below example I need this structure to located in a single byte of memory (as per the radio standard) but its currently giving me a size of 2 bytes. After much digging I understand that its because the Union's "size" is byte rather than 3 bits...but havent worked out a way around this. I have looked at:

• Bitfields in C with struct containing union of structs; and
• Will this bitfield work the way I expect?

But neither seem to give me a solution.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

#ifdef WIN32
#pragma pack(push)
#pragma pack(1)
#endif

typedef struct three_bit_struct
{
    unsigned char bit_a : 1;
    unsigned char bit_b : 1;
    unsigned char bit_c : 1;
}three_bit_struct_T;


typedef union
{
    three_bit_struct_T three_bit_struct;
    unsigned char another_three_bits : 3;
}weird_union_T;


typedef struct
{
    weird_union_T problem_union; 
    unsigned char another_bit : 1;
    unsigned char reserved : 4;
}my_structure_T;


int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
     int size;

     size = sizeof(my_structure_T);

     return 0;
}


#ifdef WIN32
#pragma pack(pop)
#endif

Answer 1

The problem is that the size of three_bit_struct_T will be rounded up to the nearest byte^* regardless of the fact that it only contains three bits in its bitfield. A struct simply cannot have a size which is part-of-a-byte. So when you augment it with the extra fields in my_structure_T, inevitably the size will spill over into a second byte.

To cram all that stuff into a single byte, you'll have to put all the bitfield members in the outer my_structure_T rather than having them as an inner struct/union.

I think the best you can do is have the whole thing as a union.

typedef struct
{
    unsigned char bit_a : 1;
    unsigned char bit_b : 1;
    unsigned char bit_c : 1;
    unsigned char another_bit : 1;
    unsigned char reserved : 4;
} three_bit_struct_T;

typedef struct
{
    unsigned char another_three_bits : 3;
    unsigned char another_bit : 1;
    unsigned char reserved : 4;
} another_three_bit_struct_T;

typedef union
{
    three_bit_struct_T three_bit_struct;
    another_three_bit_struct_T another_three_bit_struct;
} my_union_T;

_{(*) or word, depending on alignment/packing settings.}