Day 6: Structs in C: Organizing Data without Classes

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

In languages like Java or Python you use classes to bundle data together.
C doesn’t have classes; it has something rawer: structs.

A struct (structure) is how we create custom data types. Without structs, storing a student’s data would require separate variables:

char *name1;
int   age1;
float gpa1;

With structs you can group these fields into a single Student type, which is the ancestor of the “object” concept in object‑oriented programming.

Example: Defining and Using a Struct

// Day 6: Grouping chaos into order

#include 
#include 

// Before: Messy variables scattered everywhere
// char *name1 = "Alice"; int age1 = 20;

// After: A custom data type
// We define a blueprint called "Student"
typedef struct {
    char  name[50];
    int   age;
    float gpa;
} Student;

int main() {
    // Treat the data as a single "object"
    // Initialize it like an array
    Student s1 = {"Alice", 20, 3.8};

    // Access fields using the dot operator (.)
    printf("Name: %s\n", s1.name);
    printf("GPA:  %.2f\n", s1.gpa);

    return 0;
}

View the source code on GitHub: