Can a Data Type Span Multiple Virtual Pages? (Windows)

Question

Can a multi-byte primitive data type (ie int, double, float, etc) span multiple virtual pages on Windows?

ex) The first 4-bytes of a double on a virtual page, and the next 4-bytes of a double on the next virtual page. Is this possible*?

What about structs? Arrays?

---

*I presume it is technically possible to just cast the address of the last 4-bytes of arbitrary memory in a virtual page to a double pointer, as long as there is another virtual page that follows -- but I'm more curious if this can happen naturally in a compiled/interpreted program.

Answer 1

I don't see why not.

For instance, if I'm mapping a binary file into memory, I may configure its structure as such:

//Visual Studio code

#pragma pack(push,1)
struct STRUCT1{
    char dummy[0x1000 - 4];
    double fDouble;
};
#pragma pack(pop)

struct STRUCT2{
    STRUCT1 __declspec(align(0x1000)) s1;
};


int main()
{
    STRUCT2 s2 = {0};
    s2.s1.fDouble = -123.124;

    //This construct is just to give you the direct pointer
    double* pD = (double*)((BYTE*)&s2 + offsetof(STRUCT2, s1.fDouble));
    double fDVal = *pD;

}

Then if we break with a debugger on the last line and check the value of pD (that is in the RAX register in this screenshot):

You will see that the double variable is straddling the page boundary (marked in red):

This is far from ideal from the efficiency standpoint (due to those SSE2 instructions not "liking" being unaligned) but it is quite possible.

Answer 2

While it can happen as a result of hand-coded code, it is unlikely in practice to occur as a result of compiled code. Compilers generally align data appropriately such that a 4-bytes value will begin on a 4-bytes-aligned address, 8-bytes at 8-bytes, etc, to avoid alignment exceptions.