What are the differences between a struct and a class?

Use a class if:

  • Its identity is important. Structures get copied implicitly when being passed by value into a method.
  • It will have a large memory footprint.
  • Its fields need initializers.
  • You need to inherit from a base class.
  • You need polymorphic behavior;

Use a structure if:

  • It will act like a primitive type (int, long, byte, etc.).
  • It must have a small memory footprint.
  • You are calling a P/Invoke method that requires a structure to be passed in by value.
  • You need to reduce the impact of garbage collection on application performance.
  • Its fields need to be initialized only to their default values. This value would be zero for numeric types, false for Boolean types, and null for reference types.
    • Note that in C# 6.0 structs can have a default constructor that can be used to initialize the struct’s fields to nondefault values.
  • You do not need to inherit from a base class (other than ValueType, from which all structs inherit).
  • You do not need polymorphic behavior.

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