Why Choose Struct Over Class?

Question

Playing around with Swift, coming from a Java background, why would you want to choose a Struct instead of a Class? Seems like they are the same thing, with a Struct offeri

Answer 1

Structure is much more faster than Class. Also, if you need inheritance then you must use Class. Most important point is that Class is reference type whereas Structure is value type. for example,

class Flight {
    var id:Int?
    var description:String?
    var destination:String?
    var airlines:String?
    init(){
        id = 100
        description = "first ever flight of Virgin Airlines"
        destination = "london"
        airlines = "Virgin Airlines"
    } 
}

struct Flight2 {
    var id:Int
    var description:String
    var destination:String
    var airlines:String  
}

now lets create instance of both.

var flightA = Flight()

var flightB = Flight2.init(id: 100, description:"first ever flight of Virgin Airlines", destination:"london" , airlines:"Virgin Airlines" )

now lets pass these instance to two functions which modify the id, description, destination etc..

func modifyFlight(flight:Flight) -> Void {
    flight.id = 200
    flight.description = "second flight of Virgin Airlines"
    flight.destination = "new york"
    flight.airlines = "Virgin Airlines"
}

also,

func modifyFlight2(flight2: Flight2) -> Void {
    var passedFlight = flight2
    passedFlight.id = 200
    passedFlight.description = "second flight from virgin airlines" 
}

so,

modifyFlight(flight: flightA)
modifyFlight2(flight2: flightB)

now if we print the flightA's id and description, we get

id = 200
description = "second flight of Virgin Airlines"

Here, we can see the id and description of FlightA is changed because the parameter passed to the modify method actually points to the memory address of flightA object(reference type).

now if we print the id and description of FLightB instance we get,

id = 100
description = "first ever flight of Virgin Airlines"

Here we can see that the FlightB instance is not changed because in modifyFlight2 method, actual instance of Flight2 is passes rather than reference ( value type).