Generic Enumeration

MemoryLayout

The memory layout of a type, describing its size, stride, and alignment.

Declaration

@frozen enum MemoryLayout<T>

Overview

You can use MemoryLayout as a source of information about a type when allocating or binding memory using raw pointers. The following example declares a Point type with x and y coordinates and a Boolean isFilled property.

struct Point {
    let x: Double
    let y: Double
    let isFilled: Bool
}

The size, stride, and alignment of the Point type are accessible as static properties of MemoryLayout<Point>.

// MemoryLayout<Point>.size == 17
// MemoryLayout<Point>.stride == 24
// MemoryLayout<Point>.alignment == 8

Always use a multiple of a type’s stride instead of its size when allocating memory or accounting for the distance between instances in memory. This example allocates uninitialized raw memory with space for four instances of Point.

let count = 4
let pointPointer = UnsafeMutableRawPointer.allocate(
        bytes: count * MemoryLayout<Point>.stride,
        alignedTo: MemoryLayout<Point>.alignment)

Topics

Accessing the Layout of a Type

Use these static properties to access a type's layout. For example, the size of a Double instance is MemoryLayout<Double>.size.

static var size: Int

The contiguous memory footprint of T, in bytes.

static var alignment: Int

The default memory alignment of T, in bytes.

static var stride: Int

The number of bytes from the start of one instance of T to the start of the next when stored in contiguous memory or in an Array<T>.

Accessing the Layout of a Value

Pass an instance to these static methods to acess the layout for that instance's type.

static func stride(ofValue: T) -> Int

Returns the number of bytes from the start of one instance of T to the start of the next when stored in contiguous memory or in an Array<T>.

static func size(ofValue: T) -> Int

Returns the contiguous memory footprint of the given instance.

static func alignment(ofValue: T) -> Int

Returns the default memory alignment of T.

Querying Type Properties

static func offset(of: PartialKeyPath<T>) -> Int?

Returns the offset of an inline stored property within a type’s in-memory representation.