C Specification

A collection of flags is represented by a bitmask using the type VkFlags:

// Provided by VK_VERSION_1_0
typedef uint32_t VkFlags;

Description

Bitmasks are passed to many commands and structures to compactly represent options, but VkFlags is not used directly in the API. Instead, a Vk*Flags type which is an alias of VkFlags, and whose name matches the corresponding Vk*FlagBits that are valid for that type, is used.

Any Vk*Flags member or parameter used in the API as an input must be a valid combination of bit flags. A valid combination is either zero or the bitwise OR of valid bit flags.

An individual bit flag is valid for a Vk*Flags type if it would be a valid enumerant when used with the equivalent Vk*FlagBits type, where the bits type is obtained by taking the flag type and replacing the trailing Flags with FlagBits. For example, a flag value of type VkColorComponentFlags must contain only bit flags defined by VkColorComponentFlagBits.

Any Vk*Flags member or parameter returned from a query command or otherwise output from Vulkan to the application may contain bit flags undefined in its corresponding Vk*FlagBits type. An application cannot rely on the state of these unspecified bits.

Only the low-order 31 bits (bit positions zero through 30) are available for use as flag bits.

Note

This restriction is due to poorly defined behavior by C compilers given a C enumerant value of 0x80000000. In some cases adding this enumerant value may increase the size of the underlying Vk*FlagBits type, breaking the ABI.

See Also

Document Notes

For more information, see the Vulkan Specification

This page is extracted from the Vulkan Specification. Fixes and changes should be made to the Specification, not directly.

Copyright 2014-2023 The Khronos Group Inc.

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0