comparison HACKING @ 4549:785b606fd504

Clarified and fixed the explanation of structure packing and unaligned memory access.

4546:d4c5719d30d1

- When reading data from files, it's usually a BIG mistake to read structs
  directly from the stream! This is not portable, as C does not guarantee
  a struct not to have alignment padding (unless the struct is "packed",
  but see below.) In effect sizeof(struct) on some platform may not be
  equal to some other platform.

  Some clever people might think that making struct "packed" via the
  C packed qualifier would be a solution, but this will cause problems
  on platforms which require words to be aligned in memory - so it
  "works" on x86 (with performance penalty), but will fail with bus error
  on elsewhere.

  What you SHOULD do is read individual members of the struct one by one
  from the stream. This may sound bothersome, but by doing so, your code
  will be portable.


- Always use Glib sized types for reading integer data from file streams.
  Using plain C types (like 'long int' for example) is not wise, because
  they may be of different size on different platforms depending on the

4549:785b606fd504

- When reading data from files, it's usually a BIG mistake to read structs
  directly from the stream! This is not portable, as C does not guarantee
  a struct not to have alignment padding (unless the struct is "packed",
  but see below.) In effect sizeof(struct), unless packed, on some platform
  may not be equal to some other platform.

  Making struct "packed" via the C packed qualifier or "#pragma pack()" is
  a solution, but this must be used with care. Unaligned memory access
  causes performance penalties, and may cause other, more serious problems
  in some cases. For example, code written in assembler may not know about
  the un-alignment, and may thus fail with 'bus errors' on platforms that
  strictly required aligned data.

  The 100% safe way is to read individual members of the struct one by one
  from the stream. This may be bothersome, but by doing so, your code
  will be portable for sure.


- Always use Glib sized types for reading integer data from file streams.
  Using plain C types (like 'long int' for example) is not wise, because
  they may be of different size on different platforms depending on the