Structure Definition

When a structure is declared, there is no memory allocated for storing any data. The memory is set aside to any structure only when it is defined. The structure definition creates structure variables and allocates storage space for them. The individual members of the structure variables are stored in contiguous memory locations. To define a structure variable we use the structure header followed by variable(s) name and semicolon. Consider we have declared a structure student then the statement:

 struct student s1,s2;

creates two variables s1 and s2 of type student and allocates memory to its members as shown in fig:

From fig. it is clear that each structure variable gets separate memory  for storing values for its memebers. The memory reserved for structure variable s1 is quql to the sum of bytes the individual memebers of the structure acquire i.e. total 26 bytes.

The structure variables can also be created during the declaration of the structure. For example :

struct student

{

            int rollno;

            char name [20];

            float marks;

} s1,s2;

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