pointer is always byte aligned

Question

Hi, I read something like pointer must be byte-aligned. My understanding in a typical 32bit architecture... all pointers are byte aligned...No ?

Please confirm.

can there be a pointer which is not byte-aligned ?

Basically this is mentioned in a hardware reference manual for tx descriptor memory.

Answer 1

Yes, you cannot address any amount of memory smaller than a byte.

Answer 2

If a pointer or a number is not byte aligned, it would start in the middle of a byte. I.e. some bits of a byte would belong to one pointer, and other bits to another. This would be strange and it does not occur in practice.