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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. A struct can contain other data types so is used for mixed-data-type records.
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:
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 .
A data structure known as a hash table.. In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. [1] [2] [3] More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data, [4] i.e., it is an algebraic structure about data.
C functions are akin to the subroutines of Fortran or the procedures of Pascal. A definition is a special type of declaration. A variable definition sets aside storage and possibly initializes it, a function definition provides its body. An implementation of C providing all of the standard library functions is called a hosted implementation.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 12 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 ...
Although C and C++ do not allow the compiler to reorder structure members to save space, other languages might. It is also possible to tell most C and C++ compilers to "pack" the members of a structure to a certain level of alignment, e.g. "pack(2)" means align data members larger than a byte to a two-byte boundary so that any padding members ...
C's offsetof() macro is an ANSI C library feature found in stddef.h. It evaluates to the offset (in bytes) of a given member within a struct or union type, an expression of type size_t . The offsetof() macro takes two parameters , the first being a structure or union name, and the second being the name of a subobject of the structure/union that ...