What are group types

Groupings of elements are data structures that allow us to combine and organize related variables into a single variable.

We define these groupings ourselves and they can contain different types of variables (such as numbers, text strings. They can even contain other groupings).

For example, imagine you have to store the data of a person. This data is, for example:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Email

For example, we could use independent variables to store the person’s data

string name;
DateTime birthDate;
string email;

But, imagine we have to work with more than one person… What are we going to do? Use name1, name2…?

// this would not be practical at all!
string name1;
string name2;
string name3;

DateTime birthDate1;
DateTime birthDate2;
DateTime birthDate3;
// etc...

It would not be very practical or comfortable to use. Besides, it would be a potential source of errors, as we could easily mix them up by mistake.

Instead, it is much better to create a grouping of variables. For example,

Which defined in code would look something like this.

Person
{
    string name;
    DateTime birthDate;
    string email;
}

Now, we can create a new Person, and access its properties using the . operator.

Person person1;
person1.name = "Luis Pérez";
person1.birthDate = new DateTime(1990, 5, 15);
person1.email = "luis@example.com";

If we had to work with more than one person, we would simply need to create person2, person3…

Person person1;
Person person2;
Person person3;

This has the advantage that each person’s data is grouped in a “pack”. This, besides being more comfortable to use, makes it much harder to accidentally mix up data from one person with another.

Common types of groupings

There are **several types of groupings used in programming, each with its own characteristics and uses. The most common are the following:

• STRUCTS read more
• OBJECTS read more
• TUPLES read more