Secondary Data Types :
1. Arrays :
An array in C
language is a collection of similar data-type,
means an array can hold value of a particular data type for
which it has been declared. Arrays can be created from any
of the C data-types int, float, and char. So an integer
array can only hold integer values and cannot hold values
other than integer.
Types of Arrays:
-
One Dimensional Array
-
Two Dimensional Array
-
Multi Dimensional Array
Declaration Of Arrays :
Syntax : type var_name[size];
2. Structures : We used variable in our C program to store value but one variable can store only single piece information (an integer can hold only one integer value) and to store similar type of values we had to declare many variables. To overcome this problem we used array which can hold numbers of similar data type. But array too have some limitations, like in our real world application we deal with set of dissimilar data types and single array cannot store dissimilar data.
For example : Think about storing book information or
product information, a product can have different
information to store like product code (an integer),
product name (a char array), product price (a float)
etc. And to store 20 products information we can declare
integer array for product code, 2D character array for
storing product name and float array to store product price.
This approach definitely achieves your goals, but try to
consider these things too. What if you wanted to add
more products than 20, what if you want to add more
information on products like stock, discount, tax etc? It
will become difficult to differentiate these variables with
other variables declared for calculation etc.
To solve this problem C language has
a unique data type called
Structure. C structure is
nothing but collection of different
related data types. If we are using
C structure then we are combining
different related data types in one
group so that we can use and manage
those variables easily. Here related
data type means, a structure holding
information about book will contains
variable and array related to book.
Syntax For
Structures :
Syntax :
struct structure_name
{
data type member1;
data type member2;
…
…
};
For Example :
struct
products
{
char
name[20];
int
stock;
float
price;
};