Berkeley DB Reference Guide: Data alignment

Berkeley DB Reference Guide:
Access Methods

Data alignment

The Berkeley DB access methods provide no guarantees about byte alignment for returned key/data pairs, or callback functions which take DBT references as arguments, and applications are responsible for arranging any necessary alignment. The DB_DBT_MALLOC, DB_DBT_REALLOC and DB_DBT_USERMEM flags may be used to store returned items in memory of arbitrary alignment.