Are bits in the structure guaranteed

Question

I have a question related to structure bit fields, please see below as I am a bit clueless on which keywords I should use to best describe my issue:

Context: I am writing a disassembler for MIPS R3000A Assembly Instructions, the one that were used for Playstation Programs in the early 2000.

Issue: I would like to know if in this code:

struct Instruction {
    u32 other:26;
    u32 op:6;
};

//main:
Instruction instruction = *(Instruction*)(data + pc);
printf("%02x\n", instruction.op);

it is guaranteed that all compilers, using little endianness, will always using the op:6 bit-fields to store the first 6 MSB ? (which is a bit counter intuitive, you would assume that the last 6 bits are stored in the op bit field)

It is an alternative to the following code:

static uint32_t get_op_code(uint32_t data) {
    uint16_t mask = (1 << 6) - 1;
    return (data >> 26) & mask;
}

//main:
uint32_t instruction = *(uint32_t*)(data + pc);
uint32_t op = get_op_code(instruction);
printf("%02x\n", op);

It is working fine on my side and it seems slightly faster using the structure approach, not to mention that is is more intuitive and clear, but I am afraid that it would not be guaranteed that the 6 first bits are stored in the second bit-field "op" of the structure.

Answer 1

The C standard does not guarantee how bit-fields are arranged. It does require each implementation to define it, so it should be in the documentation for a compiler. Per C 2018 6.7.2.1 11:

An implementation may allocate any addressable storage unit large enough to hold a bit-field. If enough space remains, a bit-field that immediately follows another bit-field in a structure shall be packed into adjacent bits of the same unit. If insufficient space remains, whether a bit-field that does not fit is put into the next unit or overlaps adjacent units is implementation-defined. The order of allocation of bit-fields within a unit (high-order to low-order or low-order to high-order) is implementation-defined. The alignment of the addressable storage unit is unspecified.