Alignment Audit

What this C++ memory alignment question tests

This is a medium-difficulty C++ question that probes your understanding of data alignment and how compilers lay out structures in memory. It's the kind of question that separates candidates who have read the standard from those who rely on intuition alone.

To answer correctly, you need to reason about how the compiler pads and aligns member variables within a struct, how alignof and sizeof interact, and what the actual memory layout looks like on a 64-bit platform. The question rewards precise knowledge of alignment rules and the ability to trace through a concrete example without running the code.

• Struct member alignment and padding
• The alignof and sizeof operators
• Platform-specific data layout on 64-bit systems
• Compiler decisions about struct packing and trailing padding