This is because of padding added to satisfy alignment constraints. Data structure alignment impacts both performance and correctness of programs:
- Mis-aligned access might be a hard error (often
SIGBUS
).
- Mis-aligned access might be a soft error.
- Either corrected in hardware, for a modest performance-degradation.
- Or corrected by emulation in software, for a severe performance-degradation.
- In addition, atomicity and other concurrency-guarantees might be broken, leading to subtle errors.
Here's an example using typical settings for an x86 processor (all used 32 and 64 bit modes):
struct X
{
short s; /* 2 bytes */
/* 2 padding bytes */
int i; /* 4 bytes */
char c; /* 1 byte */
/* 3 padding bytes */
};
struct Y
{
int i; /* 4 bytes */
char c; /* 1 byte */
/* 1 padding byte */
short s; /* 2 bytes */
};
struct Z
{
int i; /* 4 bytes */
short s; /* 2 bytes */
char c; /* 1 byte */
/* 1 padding byte */
};
const int sizeX = sizeof(struct X); /* = 12 */
const int sizeY = sizeof(struct Y); /* = 8 */
const int sizeZ = sizeof(struct Z); /* = 8 */
One can minimize the size of structures by sorting members by alignment (sorting by size suffices for that in basic types) (like structure Z
in the example above).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Both the C and C++ standards state that structure alignment is implementation-defined. Therefore each compiler may choose to align data differently, resulting in different and incompatible data layouts. For this reason, when dealing with libraries that will be used by different compilers, it is important to understand how the compilers align data. Some compilers have command-line settings and/or special #pragma
statements to change the structure alignment settings.
Caveat: It is not necessary to put the implementation in the header file, see the alternative solution at the end of this answer.
Anyway, the reason your code is failing is that, when instantiating a template, the compiler creates a new class with the given template argument. For example:
template<typename T>
struct Foo
{
T bar;
void doSomething(T param) {/* do stuff using T */}
};
// somewhere in a .cpp
Foo<int> f;
When reading this line, the compiler will create a new class (let's call it FooInt
), which is equivalent to the following:
struct FooInt
{
int bar;
void doSomething(int param) {/* do stuff using int */}
}
Consequently, the compiler needs to have access to the implementation of the methods, to instantiate them with the template argument (in this case int
). If these implementations were not in the header, they wouldn't be accessible, and therefore the compiler wouldn't be able to instantiate the template.
A common solution to this is to write the template declaration in a header file, then implement the class in an implementation file (for example .tpp), and include this implementation file at the end of the header.
Foo.h
template <typename T>
struct Foo
{
void doSomething(T param);
};
#include "Foo.tpp"
Foo.tpp
template <typename T>
void Foo<T>::doSomething(T param)
{
//implementation
}
This way, implementation is still separated from declaration, but is accessible to the compiler.
Alternative solution
Another solution is to keep the implementation separated, and explicitly instantiate all the template instances you'll need:
Foo.h
// no implementation
template <typename T> struct Foo { ... };
Foo.cpp
// implementation of Foo's methods
// explicit instantiations
template class Foo<int>;
template class Foo<float>;
// You will only be able to use Foo with int or float
If my explanation isn't clear enough, you can have a look at the C++ Super-FAQ on this subject.
Best Answer
The other likely size for it is that of
int
, being the "efficient" integer type for the platform.On architectures where it makes any difference whether the implementation chooses 1 or
sizeof(int)
there could be a trade-off between size (but if you're happy to waste 7 bits perbool
, why shouldn't you be happy to waste 31? Use bitfields when size matters) vs. performance (but when is storing and loading bool values going to be a genuine performance issue? Useint
explicitly when speed matters). So implementation flexibility wins - if for some reason1
would be atrocious in terms of performance or code size, it can avoid it.