Bits How to program them

From: Marcia Hon (honm_at_rogers.com)
Date: 02/11/04 

Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 01:28:23 GMT

Hi,

I am writing a P2P client application. As such, I am creating packets that
are to be sent between the peers. I would like to know how in C these bits
of the packets may be programmed. These bits need to be continguous.

For example: I create a packet of size 5. 2 bytes for the size, 1 for the
message type, 1 for the start flag, 1 for the body, and 1 for the end flag.

How to I program this?

I have tried the following:

unsigned size:16;
unsigned type:8;
unsigned start:8;
unsigned body:8;
unsigned end:8;

How to I keep them contiguous? I would like to eventually send them over the
socket connection. And therefore would like to store them in an unsigned *
buffer.

Please, please help.

Thank you,
Marcia