C Programming

STRUCTURES WHICH CONTAIN STRUCTURES
Structures can also contain structures. Consider where both a date and time structure are combined into a single structure called date_time, eg,


	struct date {
		int  month, day, year;
	};

	struct time {
		int  hours, mins, secs;
	};

	struct date_time {
		struct date sdate;
		struct time stime;
	};

This declares a structure whose elements consist of two other previously declared structures. Initialization could be done as follows,


	static struct date_time today = { { 2, 11, 1985 }, { 3, 3,33 } };

which sets the sdate element of the structure today to the eleventh of February, 1985. The stime element of the structure is initialized to three hours, three minutes, thirty-three seconds. Each item within the structure can be referenced if desired, eg,


	++today.stime.secs;
	if( today.stime.secs == 60 ) ++today.stime.mins;