When to use a structure

Structures, simply put, are a way to organize a collection of values. Considering the various other ways to organize data (ex. arrays), when should a structure be used?

Generally, use a structure if you:

• Are grouping multiple different data types together
• Have a small memory footprint
• Have fields which would only be initialized to their default values (for example, all Boolean types are initialized to false and all numeric types are initialized to 0 .

These conditions become more important when identifying the difference between a structure and a class, as they are extremely similar!

Structures as parameters

If you would like to pass a structure into a method as a parameter, you cannot simply pass the entire object.

The following code will throw an error:

struct class{
	// String variable
	char title[50];
}

void useClass(struct class) {
	// Use your struct
	return;
}

int main() {
	struct class biology;
	useClass(biology);
	// Will throw an error
}

Instead, you must use a reference to pass the struct so that the method can access and modify the values within it. This can be done by passing a pointer into a function: