Union and structure are the user-defined data types. Both of these are used in the C/C++ programming language. Most often, both of these are taken as the same one. However, there are indeed significant differences between both of these. Let us rush to the differences.
Structure VS Union
What is Structure?
The programming language that is responsible for storing the value of different data types in one place is structure. The main keyword that defines and indicates the structured data is struct. It is responsible for storing single or multiple elements of a variable. There are various parameters of structure such as email address, department, name, and ID.
What is Union?
In the case of a union, a single member occupies memory of the data at once. Union is a part of C programming. This is user-defined and composed of data types that contain different values. The size of the union is dependent on the size of the member size’s most extensive data. Union comes up with the flexibility to use the exact memory location effectively, making it available several times for storage by each data member. The keyword that defines it the best is union.
Accessibility of Variable
The accessibility for the variable member varies for both union and structure. In the case of structure, every variable member is accessible with ease and flexibility at one time. However, in the case of union, one variable member is accessible to the user at a time.
Data Retrieval
The structure is characterized by the ability to retrieve any data when required. At a time, it can retrieve any data member for your ease. However, there is the retrieval of any one data member in the union at a time.
Benefit of Structure Difference between structure and union
The benefit of structure is that it comprises simple parameters having separate arrays. However, there is a minimal structure disadvantage: it is massively tough to manage employee data. Consider the condition when you have had 100 or even more than this parameter associated with a single employee. Managing these is not that easy, but struct helps much to do so with flexibility.
Benefits of Union Difference between structure and union
Memory space matters a lot and is an area of serious concern. Union offers the flexibility to the data to occupy less memory space. When you are using union, then you can directly access the most prominent size data member. When you want to use the least storage coverage or the same memory to store the different data members, the union is the best option. It comes up with the flexibility to allocate specific memory sizes to multiple data members.
Also read: Difference between nse and bse
Limitations
Managing the data is a huge responsibility. It is very challenging and complex for the structure to manage the complex project data for all data members. The structure takes much of the storage space that often makes it slow to process. In the case of unions, not all members of data initialize. The interchanging values use to operate unions. It offers access to merely a single data member at one time. A single common memory space share among all data members.
