When should I use a struct instead of a class?

Question

MSDN says that you should use structs when you need lightweight objects. Are there any other scenarios when a struct is preferable over a class?

Some people might ha

Answer 1

Use a class if:

• Its identity is important. Structures get copied implicitly when being passed by value into a method.
• It will have a large memory footprint.
• Its fields need initializers.
• You need to inherit from a base class.
• You need polymorphic behavior;

Use a structure if:

• It will act like a primitive type (int, long, byte, etc.).
• It must have a small memory footprint.
• You are calling a P/Invoke method that requires a structure to be passed in by value.
• You need to reduce the impact of garbage collection on application performance.
• Its fields need to be initialized only to their default values. This value would be zero for numeric types, false for Boolean types, and null for reference types.
  • Note that in C# 6.0 structs can have a default constructor that can be used to initialize the struct’s fields to nondefault values.
• You do not need to inherit from a base class (other than ValueType, from which all structs inherit).
• You do not need polymorphic behavior.