From Java to C#: A Developers Guide

You will be surprised how much structs appear to be like classes at first sight.

A struct is declared in the code below to represent a person's name . This is done using the struct keyword.

1: using System; 2: 3: struct Name { 4: private string FirstName; 5: private string LastName; 6: 7: public string GetName(){ 8: return FirstName + " " + LastName; 9: } 10: 11: // accessors and mutators 12: public string GetFirstName(){ 13: return FirstName; 14: } 15: public void SetFirstName(string newFirstName){ 16: FirstName = newFirstName; 17: } 18: public string GetLastName(){ 19: return LastName; 20: } 21: public void SetLastName(string newLastName){ 22: LastName = newLastName; 23: } 24: }

That's the Name struct. Now you can instantiate and use it.

25: class TestClass{ 26: public static void Main(){ 27: Name n = new Name(); 28: n.SetFirstName("Charlie"); 29: n.SetLastName("Brown"); 30: Console.WriteLine(n.GetName()); 31: } 32: }

Output:

c:\expt>test Charlie Brown

On line 27, a new instance of the Name struct is created. On lines 28 “ 30 its methods are invoked. ^[3]

^[3] In this example, public accessor and mutator methods are used to access the private fields. Structs can also contain public properties instead.

Like classes:

• structs can contain both function members ^[4] and data members ^[5] “ they can be static or non-static;

  ^[4] Function members are indexers, constructors, operators, properties, and any method. There is one exception here “ a struct cannot have a destructor.

  ^[5] Data members are read-only variables , constants, events, and fields.

• structs can be declared with the following accessibility modifiers “ public , protected , internal , and private with the same effect as classes;

• structs can be hidden using the new modifier;

• structs can implement one or more interfaces (though they cannot extend another class or another struct) “ to make the Name struct implement the MyInterface interface, just declare the struct like this:

  struct Name:MyInterface{ ... }