Why would you use a structure in programming?

Answer 1

A data structure is an aggregate of data types. The data types may be arbitrary. For example:

struct Address {

int number;

char* street;

char* city;

char* county;

char postcode[9];

};

Had the data types been of the same type, we could have used an array instead of a structure:

struct Name {

char* first_name;

char* last_name;

};

char* Name_array[2]; // alternative to using a structure

However, unlike an array where each element is accessed using an index, members of a data structure are accessed by name:

void f (Name person) {

std::cout << person.first_name << ' ' << person.last_name;

}

Note that named members helps make code more readable. To achieve the same thing with an array, we'd need to use constants or (better still) an enumeration:

enum fields {first_name, last_name};

void g (Name_array* person) {

std::cout << person[first_name] << ' ' << person[last_name];

}

There is no advantage of one method over the other in terms of performance or memory consumption, however the structure method is arguably more intuitive. It's also much easier to work with an array of structures than with an array of arrays:

Name people[100]; // 100 name structures

And even easier when working with a structure of structures:

struct Name_address {

Name name;

Address address;

};