Pros and Cons for using structures

[CodingIsFun]

Hi all experts

We have been having internal meetings about coding standards and are trying to decipher some best practices with regards to development.

We have 2 sides on this debate:

Using structures to hold data or make individual variables with sets/gets and overloaded functions within a class.

If anyone has something to add please put it in, Im very interested in what everyone else thinks about this.


thanks in advance...

 

[JurkMonkey]

They have 2 very different purposes.

I always consider a struct as being very raw. you are just dealing with a set of variables and nothing more. this has its purposes.

I tend to use classes (a.k.a beans) which give you a few more options. For instance:

When I set a variable such as color - I might want to create a brush or a pen for drawing at that time. This is when the setters and getters are handy.

public Color DrawingColor
{
get
{
return drawingbrush.Color;
}
set
{
drawingbrush = new SolidBrush(value);
}
}

I then also like the availablity to have "self-populating" classes which you can't really get with a struct. Overloading the constructor is always nice - but also to have a static method that will generate an instance of itself.

DrawingTool custompen = DrawingTool.SelectPen(Color.Blue);


Now adays, I tend to only use structs if I'm interacting with C++ components. Afterall, I can set the variables of a class the same way I can with a struct if I make them public.

 

[chiph]

Yup. I only use structs when I'm dealing with legacy data structures. Any new code is written with classes, using getters/setters, instance/static methods, constructors, etc.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first