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As we have know that by using structure, C allow us to create a data type, which can be a collection of different primitive data type elements such as int, char, float, double etc. But, do you also know that you could even have an array as an element of structure? Yes, it is possible. Let's understand the need of having an array as a element of structure by an example.


Let's suppose, we have to store a collection of information about a employee, such as -

• The name of an employee in char[] array.
• The age of an employee in int data type.
• The salary of an employee in float data type.

In such situation, we would have to use structure to create a data type which can be a collection not just primitive data types but also an array element. Let's understand such structure with an example.

Understanding structure with an array element by an example

In this example, we have created a structure named employee which has three elements of different type, such as -

• A char[] array variable named name.
• A int variable named age.
• A float variable named salary.

/* An example of structure with array element */

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{

/* Declaring a structure */
struct employee
{
	char name[20];
	int age;
	float salary;
};

/* Declaring a structure variable */
struct employee e1;

printf("Enter the name of employee : ");
gets(e1.name);	/* using gets() function to read a multi-word string from console */

printf("Enter the age of employee :");
scanf("%d", &e1.age);

printf("Enter the salary of the first employee : ");
scanf("%f", &e1.salary);


printf("The name of first employee : %s", e1.name);
printf("\n");

printf("The age of first employee : %d", e1.age);
printf("\n");

printf("The salary of first employee : %.2f", e1.salary);

return 0;
}

Output is :

Enter the name of employee : First Employee
Enter the age of employee :24
Enter the salary of the first employee : 10000
The name of first employee : First Employee
The age of first employee : 24
The salary of first employee : 10000.00

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Program Analysis

• In this code above, we have created a structure named employee, which is a collection of different data types including an array element. This structure can also be termed as a
  

  struct employee
  {
  	char name[20];
  	int age;
  	float salary;
  };
  

  
  
  
  
• The structure we declare is also an user-defined data type which can be used to create variables of its type. We have created a variable named e1 of structure type by using the struct keyword with the name of the structure, such as -
  
  

   struct employee e1; 




• Next, we have individually initialized the elements of structure with values by using them with dot-operator in scanf() function. For example -
  
  

  printf("Enter the age of employee :");
  scanf("%d", &e1.age);




• Finally, we have displayed the initialized values in the elements of structure(one-by-one) by using the dot-operator in printf() function. For example -
  
  

  printf("The salary of employee is :  : %.2f", e1.salary);

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