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In the C programming language, struct is the keyword used to define a composite, a.k.a. record, data type – a named set of values that occupy a block of memory. It allows for the different values to be accessed via a single identifier, often a pointer.
Structures may be initialized or assigned to using compound literals. A function may directly return a structure, although this is often not efficient at run-time. Since C99, a structure may also end with a flexible array member. A structure containing a pointer to a structure of its own type is commonly used to build linked data structures:
A structure can also be assigned as a unit to another structure of the same type. Structures (and pointers to structures) may also be used as function parameter and return types. For example, the following statement assigns the value of 74 (the ASCII code point for the letter 't') to the member named x in the structure tee, from above:
It is sometimes called a structure or a record or by a language-specific keyword used to define one such as struct. It falls into the aggregate type classification which includes homogenous collections such as the array and list .
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 9 February 2025. General-purpose programming language "C programming language" redirects here. For the book, see The C Programming Language. Not to be confused with C++ or C#. C Logotype used on the cover of the first edition of The C Programming Language Paradigm Multi-paradigm: imperative (procedural ...
One use for such "packed" structures is to conserve memory. For example, a structure containing a single byte (such as a char) and a four-byte integer (such as uint32_t) would require three additional bytes of padding. A large array of such structures would use 37.5% less memory if they are packed, although accessing each structure might take ...
The example C code below illustrates how structure objects are dynamically allocated and referenced. The standard C library provides the function malloc() for allocating memory blocks from the heap. It takes the size of an object to allocate as a parameter and returns a pointer to a newly allocated block of memory suitable for storing the ...
typedef is a reserved keyword in the programming languages C, C++, and Objective-C.It is used to create an additional name (alias) for another data type, but does not create a new type, [1] except in the obscure case of a qualified typedef of an array type where the typedef qualifiers are transferred to the array element type. [2]