27B. Creating Structured Values


Storing a structure in the run-time stack

Create a variable of a structure type the way you would create any variable: write the type followed by the variable name. For example, statements

  PairOfInts p;
  Cell c;
create a variable p of type PairOfInts and a variable c of type Cell.


Storing a structure in the heap

Structures such as p and c above are stored in the frame of the current function. To allocate a structure in the heap, create a pointer variable:

  Cell* p;
Notice that p is not yet initialized, and contains a junk address.

Now, initialize p to point to newly allocated memory in the heap.

  p = new Cell;