Structures in GCC are used in a variety of applications, such as:
- Data representation: Structures can be used to represent complex data types, such as records or objects, in a more organized and readable manner.
- Systems programming: In operating systems and other low-level programming tasks, structures are often used to define data structures representing hardware or software components.
- Network programming: Structures are often used to represent network packets and their associated data.
- Game development: Game developers often use structures to represent game entities, such as characters or items and their associated properties.
- Compiler design: Structures are often used to implement compilers and other programming tools.
Basically, Structures are nothing more than collections of variables so, called members. Structures allow to reference of all members by a single name. Variables within a structure don’t have to be the same type. General structure declaration:
struct structure_tag_name{
type member1;
type member2;
...
type memberX
};
or
struct structure_tag_name{
type member1;
type member2;
...
type memberX
} structure_variable_name;
In the second example, we declared the variable name. Otherwise, variables can be declared this way:
struct structure_tag_name var1, var2,var3[3];
Members of the structure can be accessed by using the member operator (.). The member operator connects the member name to the structure.
Let’s take an example:
struct position{
int x;
int y;
}robot;
We can set the robot’s position by using following sentence:
robot.x=10;
robot.y=15;
or simply
robot={10,15};
Structures can be nested. A nested structure is a structure that contains another structure as one of its members.
struct status{
int power;
struct position coordinates;
} robotstatus;
To access robot x coordinate, we have to write:
x=robotstatus.coordinates.x;
Nested structures can be used in various applications, such as representing complex data types, like records or objects, and organizing data in a more readable and maintainable manner. They’re also helpful in systems programming, where you might need to represent hardware or software components as nested data structures.
Actions can be taken with structures:
- Copy;
- Assign;
- Take its address with &;
- Access members.
Of course, you can treat a structure like a variable type. So you can create an array of structures like:
struct status{
int power;
struct position coordinates;
} robotstatus[100];
Accessing 15th robot power would be like this:
pow=robotstatus[15].power;