Navigating C++ and Object-Oriented Design

3.2. Structures and Unions

Structures group members (data and functions) to create new data types. Structures encapsulate data members (usually different data types), much like functions encapsulate program statements. Unions are like structures, but data members overlay (share) memory, and unions may access members as different types. We use structures and unions in applications that need user-defined types, such as databases, windows, and graphics.

Structures

Structure definitions have several formats, all of which include data members and member functions. To show the formats for structure definitions, let's look at structure data members first. We'll examine structure member functions in the next section.

The first structure format appears ...