12.2.4 Bit-fields

1. A member-declarator of the form

identifieropt attribute-specifier-seqopt : constant-expression brace-or-equal-initializeropt

specifies a bit-field; its length is set off from the bit-field name by a colon. The optional attribute-specifier-seq appertains to the entity being declared. The bit-field attribute is not part of the type of the class member. The constant-expression shall be an integral constant expression with a value greater than or equal to zero. The value of the integral constant expression may be larger than the number of bits in the object representation (6.9) of the bit-field’s type; in such cases the extra bits are padding bits (6.9). Allocation of bit-fields within a class object is implementation-defined. Alignment of bit-fields is implementation-defined. Bit-fields are packed into some addressable allocation unit.
[ Note: Bit-fields straddle allocation units on some machines and not on others. Bit-fields are assigned right-to-left on some machines, left-to-right on others. —end note ]

2. A declaration for a bit-field that omits the identifier declares an unnamed bit-field. Unnamed bit-fields are not members and cannot be initialized. [ Note: An unnamed bit-field is useful for padding to conform to externally-imposed layouts. —end note ] As a special case, an unnamed bit-field with a width of zero specifies alignment of the next bit-field at an allocation unit boundary. Only when declaring an unnamed bit-field may the value of the constant-expression be equal to zero.

3. A bit-field shall not be a static member. A bit-field shall have integral or enumeration type (6.9.1). A bool value can successfully be stored in a bit-field of any nonzero size. The address-of operator & shall not be applied to a bit-field, so there are no pointers to bit-fields. A non-const reference shall not be bound to a bit-field (11.6.3). [ Note: If the initializer for a reference of type const T& is an lvalue that refers to a bit-field, the reference is bound to a temporary initialized to hold the value of the bit-field; the reference is not bound to the bit-field directly. See 11.6.3. —end note ]

4. If the value true or false is stored into a bit-field of type bool of any size (including a one bit bit-field), the original bool value and the value of the bit-field shall compare equal. If the value of an enumerator is stored into a bit-field of the same enumeration type and the number of bits in the bit-field is large enough to hold all the values of that enumeration type (10.2), the original enumerator value and the value of the bit-field shall compare equal.

6.7.2.1 Structure and union specifiers
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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.
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