Subject: Re: [boost] [Review] Boost.Endian mini-review
From: Peter Dimov (lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-24 13:27:40
Beman Dawes wrote:
> In practice, the enhanced efficiency of aligned types is usually more
> important than worry about someday encountering an odd-ball architecture
> or use in an unaligned location. But it is an engineering tradeoff, so you
> can make the choice whichever way seems appropriate to your application.
The more practical problem is not oddball architectures, but the fact that
when a field changes in size, everything after that field needs to be
rechecked for alignedness. (You correctly identified this as a maintenance
problem with the fixed offset approach I outlined, and it also applies
here.)