Possible Duplicate:
What is the size of void?
Hi all ! I am using gcc for compiling my C programs, just discovered accidentally that the sizeof(void) is 1 byte in C.
Is there any explanation for this ? I always thought it to be ZERO (if it really stores nothing) !
Thanks !
This is a non standard extension of gcc, but has a rationale. When you do pointer arithmetic adding or removing one unit means adding or removing the object pointed to size. Thus defining sizeof(void)
as 1 helps defining void*
as a pointer to byte (untyped memory address). Otherwise you would have surprising behaviors using pointer arithmetic like p+1 == p
when p is void*
.
The standard way would be to use `char* for that kind of purpose (pointer to byte).
this is a gcc specific feature - see here http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.4.2/gcc/Pointer-Arith.html#Pointer-Arith
or
What is the size of void?
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