OOPS – Difference Between Class and Struct

Hi friends! Today we are going to discuss a very quite interesting and important topic of Object Oriented Programming(OOPs) i.e.“Classes and Structures“.

So firstly we'll start from the definition of each and then we'll go through the similarities and the differences between them.

Q.What is a Class?
A.Classes are blueprints(building block) describing attributes(properties) and behavior(methods) that you use to create objects while programming.

Q.What is a Structure?
A.Similarly as of a Class,Structures are also another user defined data type that are available in C# that allows to combine data items of different kinds.

So, these were the definitions of Classes and Structures.
Now, Let's find out the Similarities and Differences between Classes and Structure.

Here are some differences between a Class and a Struct.

Class	Struct
Classes are reference types	Structs are value types.
Can support inheritance	Cannot support inheritance
The reference can be null	Cannot have a null reference (unless Nullable is used)
Have memory overhead per new instance	Do not have a memory overhead per new instance - unless 'boxed'
Class can have default constructor.	Struct can only have parametrized constructors.
Class can both implement interfaces and inherit interfaces.	Struct can’t inherit or implement interfaces.

Here are some Similarities between a Class and Struct.

Class	Struct
Can Implement Interfaces.	Can Implement Interfaces.
Members are Private by default.	Members are Private by default.
Can have Main()	Can have Main()
Can have Parameterized constructor	Can have Parameterized constructor(but with the condition that “constructor must initialize all the member variables.”)
Can have methods.	Can have methods.

We will start by simple interface implementation. Let’s create an interface with one method.

public interface MyInterface
    {
        int foo();
    }

Now let’s first have a look at a simple class.

public class MyClass
    {
        int a;
    }

This class compiles fine. Now let’s implement the interface defined above

public class MyClass: MyInterface
{
int a;
}

Now when you compile this class you will get a compile time error stating that MyInterface.foo() is not implemented in MyClass. If you don’t want to implement foo in MyClass then you must declare MyClass as abstract class. Let’s now look at 2 more scenarios of interface implementation

public class MyClass : MyInterface
    {
        int a;
        public void foo()
        {
            return a;
        }
    }

This time the class compiles fine.

Summary:
So, Guys this is all about the similarities and differences between a class and a struct.
I Hope in this post I have covered all the points about Classes and Structs which will be helpful to you.

Please share this post with your friends and colleagues.

For any queries please post a comment below.

Happy Coding 😉