{"id":3920,"date":"2015-01-05T12:38:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T20:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=3920"},"modified":"2024-12-28T11:31:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T19:31:40","slug":"what-is-a-struct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/what-is-a-struct\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is a Struct in Programming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Structures<\/em>\u00a0are a group of related variables that are placed under one name. Unlike arrays, structures are not limited to one data type. The struct<\/em> keyword will allow us to create a structure.
\n
\n<\/p>\n

Below us is a brief example of a struct, with us printing out the information we assigned the struct to.<\/p>\n

\"a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Struct Code<\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

The keyword typedef<\/em> allows us to create an “alias” of a previously defined data type. The capitalized “Animal” at the end of our struct allows us to use “Animal” as a variable declaration.
\n
\n
\nThe “.”, known as the dot operator, is a structure member operator. When we create a struct, we the dot operator to access the information inside the struct.<\/p>\n

We can make arrays out of structs too! The below code has an entire array of the Animal data type.<\/p>\n

\"b\"<\/a>
\nAnimal Array Code<\/a>
\n
\n<\/p>\n

Just like other data types, structs can be created as pointers. This is used for linked lists, which will be discussed in a later blog post. When we use struct pointers, instead of the dot operator, we use “->”, which is known as the arrow operator.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Below is code to print out another zoo, but this time we are using pointers.
\n\"c\"<\/a>
\nZoo Pointer Code<\/a><\/p>\n


\n
\nThere are other additions we need\u00a0to use pointers. The stdlib<\/em> contains important functions like malloc,<\/em>\u00a0malloc stands for \u00a0“memory allocate”. Before memory allocation, the “zooptr” is pointing to a space in memory that hasn’t been allocated yet, which will cause a segmentation fault. After malloc has been called, space the size of the Animal struct has been allocated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is just an intro on how structures work. In the next blog post, we will go over how to create a linked list of structures, which is the basis for\u00a0creating binary search trees, queues, stacks, and other “data structures”.<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Structures are a group of related variables that are placed under one name. Unlike arrays, structures are not limited to one data type. The struct keyword will allow us to create a structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":3952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1563],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[4478],"class_list":["post-3920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guide"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/b2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":4478,"user_id":29,"is_guest":0,"slug":"josh-woldstad","display_name":"Josh","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/166ab2302d3f5f5f33ecab52f79a1ab44277f4ef8f5073fe66cf54070f6cd419?s=96&d=mm&r=g","1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":"","9":"","10":""}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31135,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions\/31135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}