When we use a class over a struct?

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Vulpes · Answer

A better question would be when do we use a struct rather than a class as structs are much rarer. First of all classes are reference types - a variable holds a reference to where the class instance is stored on the heap. Structs, however, are value types - a variable contains the struct instance itself - and, in the case of local variables and parameters passed by value, are stored on the stack but in other cases are stored on the heap. Structs are typically small types (ideally with a memory footprint of no more than 16 bytes) which are frequently used, have a short lifetime and do not need to support inheritance. This relieves pressure on the garbage collector (unlike classes, structs don't have to be GC'd) but without imposing the performance penalty of copying large objects around in memory (because structs are small). Ideal candidates for structs include int, long, double, bool, char and DateTime. In fact the first 5 named are just C# aliases for the .NET framework types in the System namespace : Int32, Int64, Double, Boolean and Char respectively.

When we use a class over a struct?

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