Exercises, examples and other material relating to training module C209. This topic is presented on public courses Learning to Program in C, Learning to program in C and C++, Programming in C, C and C++ Programming, Learning to program in C and C++, C and C++ Programming

Data doesn't come neatly packaged in a series of similar (homogenous) elements - instead, if you have a number of different attributes of a thing (or object), each of them may be of a different type (i.e. heterogenous). C's structs allow you to define your own data types as composites of other data types, with each individual member having a name and characteristics suitable to its particular data and function.

Articles and tips on this subject		updated
3386	Adding the pieces together to make a complete language - C Once we've covered the fundamentals of programming on a C course, we move on to cover pointers, arrays, structures, strings, input/output, and dynamic memory allocation. We teach and illustrate each of them, and we have our delegates write practical exercises to make sure that they have a grasp of ...	2011-08-11
3145	Structures v Structure Pointers in C. How, which, why. A Structure in C is a series of sequential memory locations in which you may store and access all the various attributes of a piece of composite data; you define what each of the member elements is with a typedef and then declare variables of that new type. There's a simple example [here] which defines ...	2011-01-25
3122	When is a program complete? "Code is never completed ... it can always be improved." ... it's one of the most difficult aspects in many projects to say "yes, that does what we want and we should go for a release now rather than continuing to develop until ... until it's so late that we've missed the boat / added too much complexity ...	2011-01-08
2573	C Structs - what, how and why If you want to hold a whole series of different values about something in a C program, you'll define yourself a structure (or struct.). You give a type and name to each of the elements in the structure, and then you give an overall variable name to each instance of the struct that you create. Here, ...	2010-01-13
1669	What are Unions (C programming) Structures are used to hold a whole lot of different pieces of data in a collection - by element name not number. Sometimes, you’ll only want to hold some elements of your structure in specific circumstances - a good example is where you have a whole lot of similar things you’re describing, ...	2008-06-10
1584	Using Structs and Unions together effectively in C C's Structs allow you to define a number of different variables, of different types and sizes, sequentially within a collection - you could, for example, define an animal as being: typedef struct {   char name[15];    float age;    char breed[15];   } animal; But ...	2008-03-22
1572	C - structs and unions, C++ classes and polymorphism C's structs allow you to define a variable type in which you can hold a variety of elements by name ... and that's very similar to how you define all the variables within a C++ class. In a C++ class, though, you also define your methods which take that language forward into the Object Oriented world. C's ...	2008-03-18
1478	Some new C programming examples - files, structs, unions etc A series of new "C" examples have been added to the web site - a course for a small group allowed me to go somewhat away from the more normal run yesterday and write some new illustrations in front of them. Call by value v call by pointer comparison: link Using extern to share a variable between two ...	2007-12-19

combo.c	stuctures - a first example
combo2.c	stuctures - adding pointers
combo3.c	stuctures - array of structs
dinners.c	The difference between . and -> to access a structure
lunches.c	Read file into array of structs
mytrains.c	Use of pointer to a structure
ot2.c	Defining and using a structure
ot3.c	Structure with char pointer
ot4.c	Pointer to malloc'd memory from a structure
reso.c	Struct, Structures and Structure Pointers
services.txt	Data for trains_06.c example
sixteen.c	Setting up and using structures on the heap
st1.c	Definition and first use of a structure
trains.c	An array of structures
trains_01.c	Simple demonstation of a structure
trains_02.c	Copying Strings in and out of a structure
trains_03.c	An Array of Structures
trains_04.c	Structure Pointers
trains_05.c	Dynamic allocation of memory for structs
trains_06.c	Dynamic allocation for struct and struct pointers, and populating from file
ts.c	definition and use of structure
ts2.c	Definition and use of pointer to structure
tud.c	A Union within a struct - practical use demonstration
union.c	Example of a Union in C
ztwo.c	C (towards C++), Septmeber 2018