Structs Preparation

Overview

C doesn’t have classes, but it does have structs! Today, we’ll be focusing on these pseudo-classes, how we can use them, and what they tell us about memory organization.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

• Define a struct in C
• Explain how a struct differs from a traditional class
• Explain how a struct differs from an array

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

• Explain how structs are represented in memory
• Demonstrate how complex elements (e.g. structs with nested arrays) of an array are stored in memory
• Identify when padding will be necessary for a struct in memory

Resources

Read the following:

• DIS 1.6 Struct Syntax
• DIS 2.7 Structs in Memory - Again, don’t worry about malloc and dynamic memory just yet (soon!)

Checks

Submit you answer to the following on Moodle.

1. What is the struct definition that will result in the following memory diagram?

   

• If you’d like more practice, check out DIS exercises for 1.6 and 2.7.