A structure is a user-defined data type containing a collection of logically related data which may be of different types such as int, double, char, and so on. All of them are encapsulated (packed) in a single unit with a single name. The classes of C++ are in fact generalization of C-structures. A class in C++ with only public members is similar to a C-structure. All members of a structure in C are by default public. However, in a class declaration in C++, if there is no access specifier, the members are private by default. We know that arrays can be used to represent a group of data items that belong to the same type, such as int or float. This restriction is not there in structures.

The C language permits structures to be nested, in which a structure can contain structure members. A structure may be declared inside another structure. Also, a structure may be a data member of another structure. The important thing to note is how to initialize the data members of inner structures and how to access the data members of inner structures. The use of such nested structures facilitates representation and processing of complex data.

Union is a collection of data items of different data types. It can hold data of only one member at a time though it has members of different data types. If a union has two members of different data types, they are allocated the same memory.

Let us use structure complex to represent a complex number and write a simple program containing only the main function. Thus, we can define structure complex either in the main function or before it as a global definition.

The program given below reads the information about a person and prints it on the screen. It uses a structure containing a pointer member name to represent the information about a person. Note that the program uses the dstr_read function.