https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=71509
Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail dot com> changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |npiggin at gmail dot com --- Comment #5 from Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail dot com> --- This test case seems like it may be related. It does the right thing and uses all 4 byte ops when the 8 byte alignment is removed. I post it here because it may not always be the case that smallest op is best struct s { unsigned long align1; union { unsigned int blah; unsigned int a:1; }; }; void test2(struct s *s) { s->blah = 100; if (s->a) asm volatile("#blah"); } Generates (gcc 7.0.1) test2: li 9,100 stw 9,8(3) ld 9,8(3) andi. 9,9,0x1 beqlr 0 #APP # 29 "a.c" 1 #blah # 0 "" 2 #NO_APP blr There is a more general case of mismatched load and store sizes in unions with different size types, but in this case the sizes could be matched I think.