• brian@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    sure, but if you have a single bool in a stack frame it’s probably going to be more than a byte. on the heap definitely more than a byte

    • timhh@programming.dev
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      18 hours ago

      but if you have a single bool in a stack frame it’s probably going to be more than a byte.

      Nope. - if you can’t read RISC-V assembly, look at these lines

              sb      a5,-17(s0)
      ...
              sb      a5,-18(s0)
      ...
              sb      a5,-19(s0)
      ...
      

      That is it storing the bools in single bytes. Also I only used RISC-V because I’m way more familiar with it than x86, but it will do the same thing.

      on the heap definitely more than a byte

      Nope, you can happily malloc(1) and store a bool in it, or malloc(4) and store 4 bools in it. A bool is 1 byte. Consider this a TIL moment.

      • brian@programming.dev
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        2 hours ago

        c++ guarantees that calls to malloc are aligned https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/c/malloc .

        you can call malloc(1) ofc, but calling malloc_usable_size(malloc(1)) is giving me 24, so it at least allocated 24 bytes for my 1, plus any tracking overhead

        yeah, as I said, in a stack frame. not surprised a compiler packed them into single bytes in the same frame (but I wouldn’t be that surprised the other way either), but the system v abi guarantees at least 4 byte alignment of a stack frame on entering a fn, so if you stored a single bool it’ll get 3+ extra bytes added on the next fn call.

        computers align things. you normally don’t have to think about it. Consider this a TIL moment.

        • timhh@programming.dev
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          47 minutes ago

          but calling malloc_usable_size(malloc(1)) is giving me 24, so it at least allocated 24 bytes for my 1, plus any tracking overhead

          Indeed. Padding exists. A bool is still one byte.

          it’ll get 3+ extra bytes added on the next fn call.

          …of padding. Jesus. Are you going to claim that uint16_t is not 2 bytes because it is sometimes followed by padding?