What is a structure?

Answer 1

Definiton: mode of building, construction, or organization; arrangement of parts, elements, or constituents

Answer 2

struc·ture /ˈstrʌktʃər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[struhk-cher] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -tured, -tur·ing.
–noun 1. mode of building, construction, or organization; arrangement of parts, elements, or constituents: a pyramidal structure.
2. something built or constructed, as a building, bridge, or dam.
3. a complex system considered from the point of view of the whole rather than of any single part: the structure of modern science.
4. anything composed of parts arranged together in some way; an organization.
5. the relationship or organization of the component parts of a work of art or literature: the structure of a poem.
6. Biology. mode of organization; construction and arrangement of tissues, parts, or organs.
7. Geology. a. the attitude of a bed or stratum or of beds or strata of sedimentary rocks, as indicated by the dip and strike.
b. the coarser composition of a rock, as contrasted with its texture.

8. Chemistry. the manner in which atoms in a molecule are joined to each other, esp. in organic chemistry where molecular arrangement is represented by a diagram or model.
9. Sociology. a. the system or complex of beliefs held by members of a social group.
b. the system of relations between the constituent groups of a society.
c. the relationship between or the interrelated arrangement of the social institutions of a society or culture, as of mores, marriage customs, or family.
d. the pattern of relationships, as of status or friendship, existing among the members of a group or society.

10. the pattern of organization of a language as a whole or of arrangements of linguistic units, as phonemes, morphemes or tagmemes, within larger units.
–verb (used with object) 11. to give a structure, organization, or arrangement to; construct a systematic framework for.


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[Origin: 1400–50; late ME < L structūra, equiv. to struct(us) (ptp. of struere to put together) + -ūra -ure]

Answer 3

it allows you to put multiple primitives, such as an int, float, char *, into a single item.

You might want to do this so you can pass the entire contents by simply passing a pointer to the struct instead of having to pass each element individually. ex

struct node {
int x;
int y;
char *s;
};

struct node *example;
example = (struct node *)malloc(sizeof(struct node));
example->x = 10;

then to move all 3 you just pass example into the function.

Answer 4

something that combines 1 or more primitives into a single entity.