BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO

[jammy.linux@gmail.com (Meng Zhang)]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:33 AM, Dave Hylands <dhylands@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Zhang,
>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:50 AM, Zhang Meng <jammy.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi ~List,
>>
>> Could anybody explain the macro below? what does it mean?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> #define BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO(e) (sizeof(struct { int:-!!(e); }))
>
> This is also known as a compile time assert. I think that this
> particular variant has to be used inside a function.
>
> ! is just negation and produces a zero or 1 result. !! just does it
> twice, so that a non-zero value coming in becomes 1, and a zero value
> remains as zero.
>
> If e evaluates to false (zero) then -!!(e) evaluates to zero;
> if e evaluates to true (non-zero) then -!!(e) evaluates to -1.
>
> Declaring a bit field with a size of -1 will cause a compiler error.
> I'm actually surprised that declaring a bitfield of size 0 works.
>
> The typical declarations of this I've seen usually use arrays and
> arrange for the size to be -1 or 1 (which is generally more portable).
> When you use the array style declaration, you can use it outside a
> function as well.
>
> Dave Hylands
>


Thanks Dave.

My dilemma also comes from declaring a anonymous bitfield of size 0.

The following one is easy to understand anyway.

#define BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO(e) (sizeof(char[1 - 2 * !!(e)]) - 1)


-- 
Yours sincerely
ZhangMeng