Specifies packing alignment for structure and union members. Whereas the packing alignment of structures and unions is set for an entire translation unit by the /Zp option, the packing alignment is set at the data-declaration level by the pack pragma. The pragma takes effect at the first structure or union declaration after the pragma is seen; the pragma has no effect on definitions.
When you use #pragma pack(n), where n is 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16, each structure member after the first is stored on the smaller member type or n-byte boundaries. If you use #pragma pack without an argument, structure members are packed to the value specified by /Zp. The default /Zp packing size is /Zp8.