If there is a POD structure, with some member variables, for example like this: struct foo { short a; int b; char c[50]; // ... }; Is there a way to get the size of a member variable in bytes, without creating an object of this type? I know that this will work: foo fooObj; std::cout << sizeof( fooObj.a ) << std::endl; std::cout << sizeof( fooObj.b ) << std::endl; std::cout << sizeof( fooObj.c ) <<