On 8 January 2014 20:41, Ian Pilcher wrote: > On 01/08/2014 03:59 AM, Jonathan Wakely wrote: >> >> The member def_value has no storage, so you can't initialize it. To >> use it you need to allocate sizeof(struct foo_opt)+sizeof(x) where x >> is the value you want def_val to have, and when you access def_val you >> will be accessing the extra sizeof(x) bytes after the struct. >> >> I don't see how you can statically initialize a foo_opt when you don't >> know sizeof(x). >> > > Here's a very simplified example for the specific case of a 16-bit short > on a little-endian system: > > #define SHORT_BYTES(s) { ((s) & 0xff), (((s) >> 8) & 0xff) } > > struct foo { > size_t value_size; > unsigned char value[]; > }; > > static struct foo foo_short = { > .value_size = sizeof(short), > .value = SHORT_BYTES(513), > }; Where do you think those two bytes are meant to be stored?