Let’s now take a step back and discuss why we would want to use structures. Look at an example of a program that uses bottle data without structures.

char bottleName1[]  = "Medium Bottle";
int maxCapacity1 = 24;
int currentCapcity1 = 0;

char bottleName2[]  = "Large Bottle";
int maxCapacity2 = 48;
int currentCapcity2 = 20;

Notice that we need to keep track of six variables while working with this bottle data. As we increase the number of bottles, the number of variables would increase by 3 per bottle. This approach can get extremely unmaintainable.

In a small number of situations, we could possibly use arrays. But that’s only when the data is the same type, so this isn’t useful all the time.

struct Bottle {
  char* name;
  int maxCapacity;
  int currentCapacity;
};

struct Bottle bottle1 = {"Medium Bottle", 24, 0};
struct Bottle bottle2 = {"Large Bottle", 48, 20};

Using a struct to encapsulate all the members that represent a Bottle we can:

1. Reduce complexity by representing a set of data with one variable
2. Package different, but logically similar, data together
3. Better represent real-world “things” into data types

Being able to represent data using structures is extremely beneficial as you continue working on more complex real-world problems.