offsetof

 

C

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Technical Specifications

 

Type support

size_t

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offsetof

Numeric limits

 

Defined in header <stddef.h>
#define offsetof(type, member) /*implementation-defined*/

The macro offsetof expands to an integer constant expression of type size_t, the value of which is the offset, in bytes, from the beginning of an object of specified type to its specified member, including padding if any.

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stddef.h>
 
struct S {
    char c;
    double d;
};
 
int main(void)
{
    printf("the first element is at offset %zu\n", offsetof(struct S, c));
    printf("the double is at offset %zu\n", offsetof(struct S, d));
}

Possible output:

the first element is at offset 0
the double is at offset 8

See also

size_t	unsigned integer type returned by the sizeof operator (typedef)
C++ documentation for offsetof