How to use Struct | Struct in C Programming | C Programming Language

Published: 20 February 2022
on channel: Frustrated Londa

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Structure is a user-defined datatype in C language which allows us to combine data of different types together. Structure helps to construct a complex data type which is more meaningful. It is somewhat similar to an Array, but an array holds data of similar type only. But structure on the other hand, can store data of any type, which is practical more useful.

For example: If I have to write a program to store Student information, which will have Student's name, age, branch, permanent address, father's name etc, which included string values, integer values etc, how can I use arrays for this problem, I will require something which can hold data of different types together.

In structure, data is stored in form of records.
Defining a structure

struct keyword is used to define a structure. struct defines a new data type which is a collection of primary and derived data types.

As you can see in the syntax above, we start with the struct keyword, then it's optional to provide your structure a name, we suggest you to give it a name, then inside the curly braces, we have to mention all the member variables, which are nothing but normal C language variables of different types like int, float, array etc
After the closing curly brace, we can specify one or more structure variables, again this is optional.

Note: The closing curly brace in the structure type declaration must be followed by a semicolon(;).

Here struct Student declares a structure to hold the details of a student which consists of 4 data fields, namely name, age, branch and gender. These fields are called structure elements or members.

Each member can have different datatype, like in this case, name is an array of char type and age is of int type etc. Student is the name of the structure and is called as the structure tag.

Declaring Structure Variables

It is possible to declare variables of a structure, either along with structure definition or after the structure is defined. Structure variable declaration is similar to the declaration of any normal variable of any other datatype. Structure variables can be declared in following two ways:

Structure members can be accessed and assigned values in a number of ways. Structure members have no meaning individually without the structure. In order to assign a value to any structure member, the member name must be linked with the structure variable using a dot . operator also called period or member access operator
We can also declare an array of structure variables. in which each element of the array will represent a structure variable. Example : struct employee emp[5];

The below program defines an array emp of size 5. Each element of the array emp is of type Employee.

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