When to use Struct over Class in C#

Anand SA

4y928C#

4 Replies

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Nitin Sontakke4y ago
Accepted answer
Not a very comprehensive answer (unlike Vishal's) but something comes to my mind.

First, Microsoft recommends that structures should ideally be immutable.

Second, it makes sense only when all the members of struct are value types be framework will treat struct as a value type.

For details, see below:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/945664/can-structs-contain-fields-of-reference-types

https://csharp-station.com/Tutorial/CSharp/Lesson12
Anand SA4y ago
Thank you all
Rajanikant Hawaldar4y ago
Hello Anand,
Refer below article

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/what-is-structure-and-when-to-use-in-c-sharp/#:~:text=Is%20There%20a%20Difference%20between%20Class%20and%20Structure%3F&text=1)%20Structures%20provide%20better%20performance,member%20is%20of%20reference%20type.
Vishal Yelve4y ago
- If all the member fields are value types.
- If instances of the type are small and short-lived or embedded to other instances.
- If it logically denotes a single value, same as primitive types like int, double, etc
- If the size of the instance is below 16 bytes.
- If it will not be boxed and unboxed again and again.
- If it is immutable, that means when an instance of a reference type gets changed, it affects all the references indicating the instance. But, in the case of value types, it does not affect any of its copies. For this reason, changes in value types may raise confusion in many users. So, it should be immutable.