When designing programs, a very important step is the choice of the representation of the data that we will manage.

For example, you want to write a simple program to automate the calculation of the number of neutrons in an atom.


where `N` is the number of neutrons, `A` is the atomic mass of the element, `Z` is the number of protons.


A function to calculate the number of neutrons in C would look like this:


```
int NeutronCount(float A, int Z)
{
	int N = A - Z;
	return N;
}
```

There is a function, but what will it count?

To use this function, we need to declare a huge number of variables with the characteristics of each chemical element without getting confused.


We seem to have automated calculations, but have not gained any advantage in convenience or speed.

It is very inconvenient to enter the parameters of a chemical element every time, then write down the result somewhere, etc..


```
char firstElementName[3];
int firstElementAtomicNum;
int firstElementValency;
double firstElementMass;

char secondElementName[3];
int secondElementAtomicNum;
int secondElementValency;
double secondElementMass;

char thirdElementName[3];
int thirdElementAtomicNum;
int thirdElementValency;
double thirdElementMass;
```

And so on for another 118 chemical elements.

**"It would be great if my favorite language, C, had a mechanism to describe and manipulate complex data," you thought.**

Let's visually describe the future structure that will describe any chemical element, for example silicon "**Si**":


The course covers the principles of creating and using structures, their memory and methods of data manipulation.

In this section you will learn what a structure is, why they exist and how to create them.

In this section we will review what pointers are, learn why pointers are used in structures and, most importantly, how this connection is implemented.

In this section, you'll learn how structures are stored in memory, see what alignment and padding are, and get acquainted with unions.

In this section you will learn about the features of nested structures, their application within other structures, get acquainted with anonymous structures and their application, and also superficially familiarize yourself with the most common data structures.

In this section you will implement a simple but very common data structure Linked List, and also create the necessary functions for working with the list.

C Structs

Structs Application