User-Defined Types with Pointers

Consider the following struct:

typedef struct {
    char name[20];
    int age;
    union {
        struct {
            char major[20];
            double gpa;
        } student;
        struct {
            char division[20];
            int yearsWorked;
        } employee;
    } type;
    enum {employeeK, studentK} typeK;
} person;

Suppose we want to create a pointer to a struct variable with the following information:

• Name: Bob Jones
• Student
• Age: 18
• Major: EECE
• GPA: 3.2

First, we’d declare a pointer of type person:

person *p;

Then we’d allocate memory:

p = malloc(sizeof(person));

And then we would initialize the fields:

strcpy(p->name, "Bob Jones");
p->age = 18;
strcpy(p->type.student.major, "EECE");
p->type.student.gpa = 3.2;
p->typeK = studentK;

Notice that we use a -> to access any fields in the struct (since our variable is a pointer). After we are inside an internal field like a union, we switch to . notation (since the union is not a pointer).