PROLOG¶

This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME¶

stddef.h — standard type definitions

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <stddef.h>

DESCRIPTION¶

The functionality described on this reference page is aligned with the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of POSIX.1‐2008 defers to the ISO C standard.

The <stddef.h> header shall define the following macros:

NULL

Null pointer constant. The macro shall expand to an integer constant expression with the value 0 cast to type void *.

offsetof(type, member-designator)

Integer constant expression of type size_t, the value of which is the offset in bytes to the structure member (member-designator), from the beginning of its structure (type).

The <stddef.h> header shall define the following types:

ptrdiff_t

Signed integer type of the result of subtracting two pointers.

wchar_t

Integer type whose range of values can represent distinct codes for all members of the largest extended character set specified among the supported locales; the null character shall have the code value zero. Each member of the basic character set shall have a code value equal to its value when used as the lone character in an integer character constant if an implementation does not define __STDC_MB_MIGHT_NEQ_WC__.

size_t

Unsigned integer type of the result of the sizeof operator.

The implementation shall support one or more programming environments in which the widths of ptrdiff_t, size_t, and wchar_t are no greater than the width of type long. The names of these programming environments can be obtained using the confstr() function or the getconf utility.

The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE¶

None.

RATIONALE¶

The ISO C standard does not require the NULL macro to include the cast to type void * and specifies that the NULL macro be implementation-defined. POSIX.1‐2008 requires the cast and therefore need not be implementation-defined.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS¶

None.

SEE ALSO¶

<sys_types.h>, <wchar.h>

The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, confstr()

The Shell and Utilities volume of POSIX.1‐2008, getconf

COPYRIGHT¶

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .