Structs

Objects are great for encapsulating data and functionality behind a unifying and referenceable concept, such as a person. However, not everything is an object; we may have a set of data that is logically grouped together, but that isn't much more than that. It's not more than the sum of its parts--it is the sum of its parts.

For this, there are structs. Short for structure, structs can be found in the C programming language and were, therefore, available in Objective-C, which was built on top of C. If you are familiar with iOS/macOS development, CGRect is an example of a C struct.

Structs are value types, as opposed to classes, which are reference types, and as such behave differently when passed around. In this recipe, we will examine how structs work in Swift, and learn when and how to use them.