Structure inside structure in C

Question

I am learning C and relatively new to it.

I am having trouble with Structs and I am trying to get a structure variable to hold the values firstName, lastName, tries, won, and percentage. The last three themselves have to be contained in another struct inside the first struct. My code is below, also if anyone could explain the difference between structure tags and variable types that would help a lot. I understand there may be a lot of errors in the code.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

struct team{
    char firstName[40];                     
    char lastName[40];

    struct stats{
        int tries;

        int won;

        float percentage;
    } record;
}; 

int main(){
  //Assign variable name and test print to check that struct is working.
  struct team player;
  strcpy(player.firstName,"Michael");
  strcpy(player.lastName,"Jordan");

  struct stats player;
  player.tries = 16;
  player.won = 14;
  player.percentage = ((player.won/player.tries)*100);

  printf("First Name: \t %s \n", player.firstName);
  printf("Last Name: \t %s \n", player.lastName);
  printf("Tries: \t %d \n", player.tries);
  printf("Won: \t %d \n", player.won);
  printf("Percentage: \t %f \n", player.percentage);

  return 0;
}

C and C++ are different languages. You say you are learning C, and your code looks like C. Removing the C++ tag. — crashmstr, Feb 21 '14 at 15:14
By the way, are you sure your real code have two different variables named `player`? You might want to read about [SSCCEs](http://sscce.org/). — Some programmer dude, Feb 21 '14 at 15:27

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 21 '14 at 15:17

3

When accessing struct inside struct, do it like this:

player.record.tries = 16;
player.record.won = 14;
player.record.percentage = (((float)player.record.won/player.record.tries)*100);

As for the struct tag, with the struct team type, team is the struct tag, while struct team together makes a type. You may use typedef to use struct type without struct keyword.

typedef struct team team;

answered Feb 21 '14 at 15:17

Yu Hao

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Don't forget to cast the numerator or denominator to float in that division, or you will find that their record is always zero. – John Zwinck Feb 21 '14 at 15:18
@JohnZwinck Done. Didn't notice that part, nice spot. – Yu Hao Feb 21 '14 at 15:21
What do you mean by cast it to float? Thanks for the help! – Feb 21 '14 at 15:26
1

@mungostrap In integer arithmetic, result of `3/4` is `0`, but `(float)3/4` is the float number `0.75`. – Yu Hao Feb 21 '14 at 15:29
Ah perfect, that makes a sense. Thanks for the help! – Feb 21 '14 at 16:36

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '14 at 15:16

1

You know how to access structure members (e.g. player.firstname), accessing nested structure members are just the same, with the "dot" member selection operator:

player.record.tries = ...;

answered Feb 21 '14 at 15:16

Some programmer dude

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Is Record the name or variable type? I want it to be the type. When I put the above in my code, and change every reference to player.record.tries etc I get an error saying that the struct team has no member 'won' or 'tries'. – Feb 21 '14 at 15:25
@mungostrap It's a structure member variable inside the `team` structure, just like e.g. `firstname`. – Some programmer dude Feb 21 '14 at 15:26

Vlad from Moscow · Answer 3 · 2014-02-21T15:37:51.043

The compiler shall issue an error because you defined the same name player having different types

struct team player;                             //Assign variable name and test print to check that 
// ...
struct stats player;

You should write

struct team player;                             //Assign variable name and test print to check that struct is working.
strcpy(player.firstName,"Michael");
strcpy(player.lastName,"Jordan");

player.record.tries = 16;
player.record.won = 14;
player.record.percentage = ((player.record.won / player.record.tries)*100);

Or you could write

int main(){
  //Assign variable name and test print to check that struct is working.
  struct team player;
  strcpy(player.firstName,"Michael");
  strcpy(player.lastName,"Jordan");

  struct stats s;
  s.tries = 16;
  s.won = 14;
  s.percentage = ((s.won/s.tries)*100);

  player.record = s;
  // ,,,

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

0

You can also save typing of struct everywhere by typedefing it. See this question and accepted answer for more.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

Community

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answered Feb 21 '14 at 15:20

kbshimmyo

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Structure inside structure in C

4 Answers4