Memory layout in Zig with formulas
2 months ago
- #Memory Layout
- #Zig
- #Data Structures
- Memory layout in Zig involves understanding alignment and size of types, which are not explicitly documented but can be deduced.
- Primitive types in Zig have size and alignment equal to the smallest power-of-2 bytes required to represent them.
- Structs in Zig follow specific rules for alignment and size, with fields placed at multiples of their own alignment.
- Enums in Zig have alignment and size based on their underlying integer type, with size matching the smallest power-of-2 bytes needed.
- Arrays and slices in Zig have alignment inherited from their element type, with size being length times element size.
- Unions in Zig, both tagged and untagged, have alignment and size based on their largest field, with tagged unions including an additional enum tag.
- ArrayList and MultiArrayList in Zig have fixed memory footprints, with ArrayList using Array of Structs (AoS) and MultiArrayList using Struct of Arrays (SoA) layout.