why is size of empty class is 1 byte

[Ajay]

Hello All, I have one question in mind...when you derive an empty class
and see its size it comes 1 byte,can somebody tell me why.....Thanks in
advance.
Ajay

[Greg Comeau]

In article <11************ **********@75g2 000cwc.googlegr oups.com>,
Ajay <aj**********@g mail.comwrote:

>Hello All, I have one question in mind...when you derive an empty class
and see its size it comes 1 byte,can somebody tell me why.....Thanks in
advance.

Because zero sized objects are normally not allowed so it normally
gets 1, though it could be more, it's implementation defined.
When derived from, it's implementation defined as well whether
or not it take up any space in the derived class since the
derived class won't be zero sized and no user base members would be
used since they don't exist.
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