#include <stddef.h> size_t offsetof(type, member);
This macro is useful because the sizes of the fields that compose a structure can vary across implementations, and compilers may insert different numbers of padding bytes between fields. Consequently, an element's offset is not necessarily given by the sum of the sizes of the previous elements.
A compiler error will result if member is not aligned to a byte boundary (i.e., it is a bit field).
$ ./a.out offsets: i=0; c=4; d=8 a=16 sizeof(struct s)=16
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
main(void)
{
struct s {
int i;
char c;
double d;
char a[];
};
/* Output is compiler dependent */
printf("offsets: i=%zd; c=%zd; d=%zd a=%zd\n",
offsetof(struct s, i), offsetof(struct s, c),
offsetof(struct s, d), offsetof(struct s, a));
printf("sizeof(struct s)=%zd\n", sizeof(struct s));
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}