Structures

C PROGRAMMING  UNIT 4>STRUCTURES

Structures 2
 Arrays supports packing same type data together.
 Many times packing of different types of data is necessary in
programming.
 Student record example.
 How to store and process details of 60 students in a class?? (e.g:
name,id,cgpa)
char names[60][25];
int id;
int cgpa[60];
Structures 3

 Structures in C: Provides a better way to deal with such situation.

 Structures enable us to create/define new data types..!!
called as ‘User Defined Data types’.
 Can combine different data types to define these new data types.
 Individual elements are called “members”.
 Structure are also called records.
Structures 4

 General format:
struct type-name
{
data-type1 name1;
data-type2 name2;
------------- ---------
------------- ---------
};
Structures : Defining student structure 5

 For our student problem:

Name of new
data type
struct Student
keyword {
char name[25]; Constituent data of
int id; the new data type

float cgpa;
};

 Now Student data type behaves similar to built-in data types like
int, char etc.
Array vs. Structure 6

Array Structure
 Collection of related data of  Collection of different data
same type. types.
 A derived data type from  A programmer/user defined
existing data types(e.g int data type.
int[ ])  Need to define data type first,
 Data type is often available, then declare variables/arrays of
just declare array the new type.
Declaring Structure variables 7
 Assume the structure is defined as:
struct mytype
{
int n;
char c;
float f;
};
 Declaring variable of type mytype.
struct mytype s1,s2;
Declaring structure variables-other way 8

struct mytype
{
int n;
char c;
float f;
}s1,s2;

 mytype is the new data type and s1,s2 are variables(instances)

of that type!!
Accessing structure members 9
struct mytype
{
int n;
char c;
float f;
}s1;
void main(){
s1.n = 10;
s1.c = ‘a’;
s1.f = 1.32;
printf("%d %c %f", s1.n, s1.c,s1.f);
Structure Initialization
10
Student structure
11
Student structure
12
Array of Structures 13

 Array of structures is collection of structures.

 Also called as structure array
 Syntax:
struct type_name identifier[size-value];
Eg: struct Student s[10];
14
Copying and Comparing Structure
15
variables

 2 variables of the same structure type can be copied the same way as
ordinary variables.
 E.g. : if person1 and person2 belong to same structure, then:
 person1=person2;
 person2=person1;
 C doesn’t permit logical operations on structure variables.
 To compare structure variables , we do so by comparing members
individually.
16
Word Boundaries and Slack bytes 17
 Computer stores structures using “word boundary”.
 The size of word boundary is machine dependent.
 In a computer with 2 bytes word boundary, the members of a structure are
stored left_aligned on the word boundary.
 A character data takes one byte and an integer takes 2 bytes.one byte between
them is unoccupied. This unoccupied byte is known as slack byte.
 Because of the slack byte values C does not support structure comparison

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