[Ffmpeg-devel] Stack alignment

[ramiro at lisha.ufsc.br]

Hey,

This is quite interesting...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ cat > alignment.c << EOF
> int check_alignment()
> {
>     __declspec(align(16)) int aligned;
>     return ((int)&aligned) & 15;
> }
> EOF
$ cl -c -O2 alignment.c
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.42 for
80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

alignment.c
$ objdump -d alignment.obj

alignment.obj:     file format pe-i386

Disassembly of section .text:

00000000 <_check_alignment>:
   0:   55                      push   %ebp
   1:   8b ec                   mov    %esp,%ebp
   3:   83 e4 f0                and    $0xfffffff0,%esp
   6:   8d 44 24 f0             lea    0xfffffff0(%esp),%eax
   a:   83 ec 10                sub    $0x10,%esp
   d:   83 e0 0f                and    $0xf,%eax
  10:   8b e5                   mov    %ebp,%esp
  12:   5d                      pop    %ebp
  13:   c3                      ret
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had always wondered why this stupid, broken, bloated compiler for such
an obscure system (which should never be used by any *real* programmer)
did that at line 3: of the disassembly.

Well, I guess Microsoft's compiler is just aligning its stack variables...
I wonder for how long it has been doing this... Anyone with olders
versions (eg: VC6) care to test too?

Ramiro Polla