Size of a bitfield member?

Question

Would anyone know how to extract the size of a bit-field member. The below code naturally gives me the size of an integer, but how do I find out how many bits or bytes are in mybits.one? I've tried sizeof(test.one) but which clearly won't work. I realize this is a measure of bits:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    struct mybits {
        unsigned int one:15;
    };

    mybits test;
    test.one = 455;
    cout << test.one << endl;
    cout << "The size of test.one is:  " << sizeof(test) << endl;
}

Answer 1

The draft C++ standard says sizeof shall not be applied to a bit-field in section 5.3.3 Sizeof paragraph 1. If you have control of the source then using an enum sounds much simpler and neater:

struct mybits
{
    enum bitFieldSizes
    {
        field1 = 15,
        field2 = 2,
        field3 = 4,
        field4 = 8,
        field5 = 31
    };

    unsigned int one : field1 ;  
    unsigned int two : field2 ;  
    unsigned int three : field3 ;
    unsigned int four : field4 ;
    unsigned int five : field5 ;
};

If you don't have control of the source it is possible to use bit hacks to obtain the size of your bit-field and std::bitset makes it easier:

#include <iostream>
#include <bitset>

struct mybits
{
    unsigned int one : 15 ;  
    unsigned int two : 2 ;  
    unsigned int three : 4 ;
    unsigned int four : 8 ;
    unsigned int five : 31 ;
};

int main()
{
    mybits mb1 ;

    mb1.one   =  ~0 ;
    mb1.two   =  ~0 ;
    mb1.three =  ~0 ;
    mb1.four  =  ~0 ;
    mb1.five  =  ~0 ;

    std::bitset<sizeof(unsigned int)*8> b1(mb1.one);
    std::bitset<sizeof(unsigned int)*8> b2(mb1.two);
    std::bitset<sizeof(unsigned int)*8> b3(mb1.three);
    std::bitset<sizeof(unsigned int)*8> b4(mb1.four);
    std::bitset<sizeof(unsigned int)*8> b5(mb1.five);

    std::cout << b1 << ":" << b1.count() << std::endl ;
    std::cout << b2 << ":" << b2.count() << std::endl ;
    std::cout << b3 << ":" << b3.count() << std::endl ;
    std::cout << b4 << ":" << b4.count() << std::endl ;
    std::cout << b5 << ":" << b5.count() << std::endl ;
}

which produces the following output:

00000000000000000111111111111111:15
00000000000000000000000000000011:2
00000000000000000000000000001111:4
00000000000000000000000011111111:8
01111111111111111111111111111111:31