Essay on Computing: Pascal and Structure Type

Submitted By becappleton
Words: 463
Pages: 2

Data structures
A data structure is a group of data elements grouped together under one name. These data elements, known as members, can have different types and different lengths. Data structures are declared in C++ using the following syntax:

struct structure_name { member_type1 member_name1; member_type2 member_name2; member_type3 member_name3;
.
.
} object_names;
The first thing we have to know is that a data structure creates a new type: Once a data structure is declared, a new type with the identifier specified as structure_name is created and can be used in the rest of the program as if it was any other type. For example:
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7 struct product { int weight; float price;
} ;

product apple; product banana, melon;

We have first declared a structure type called product with two members: weight and price, each of a different fundamental type. We have then used this name of the structure type (product) to declare three objects of that type: apple, banana and melon as we would have done with any fundamental data type.

Once declared, product has become a new valid type name like the fundamental ones int, char or short and from that point on we are able to declare objects (variables) of this compound new type, like we have done with apple, banana and melon.
Right at the end of the struct declaration, and before the ending semicolon, we can use the optional field object_name to directly declare objects of the structure type. For example, we can also declare the structure objects apple, banana and melon at the moment we define the data structure type this way:
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4 struct product { int weight; float price;
} apple, banana, melon;

Once we have declared our three objects of a determined structure type (apple, banana and melon) we can operate directly with their members. To do that we use a dot (.) inserted between the object name and the member name. For example, we could operate