C++ How to Program, 10/e

22.1 Introduction

We now discuss structures, their near equivalence with classes, and the manipulation of bits, characters and C strings. Many of the techniques we present here are included for the benefit of those who will work with legacy C and C++ code.

Like classes, C++ structures may contain access specifiers, member functions, constructors and destructors. In fact, the only differences between structures and classes in C++ is that structure members default to public access and class members default to private access when no access specifiers are used, and that structures default to public inheritance, whereas classes default to private inheritance. Our presentation of structures here is typical of the legacy C code and early C++ code ...