c++.. struct or class....?

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Original post by MTclip are there differences..?

There is One (1) and exactly One (1) difference.

The default scope of a struct member is public. The default scope of a class member is private.

Put another way...

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Original post by Promit There is One (1) and exactly One (1) difference. The default scope of a struct member is public. The default scope of a class member is protected.

And default inheritance for a struct is public and the default inheritance for a class is private.

It's mostly a matter of preference. People generally use classes for things that have behavior, and structs for things that just hold data. But it's not a strict rule.

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Original post by Promit Quote: Original post by MTclip are there differences..? There is One (1) and exactly One (1) difference. The default scope of a struct member is public. The default scope of a class member is protected. Put another way... *** Source Snippet Removed ***

private, not protected. Also, inheritance defaults to private as opposed to public as Sicrane clarified.

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Original post by SiCrane Quote: Original post by Promit There is One (1) and exactly One (1) difference. The default scope of a struct member is public. The default scope of a class member is protected. And default inheritance for a struct is public and the default inheritance for a class is private.

*shrug* I always felt that was a logical extension of the scope, myself. And yeah, I meant private. Gah.

It comes down to preference, though my preference is to type less. I look at it this way:

Every (ok there might be an exception somewhere) types will need public members. Thus if I use the "class" keyword to define my types I will always have to type "public:" somewhere.

Some types will need private members. Thus if I use the "struct" keyword to define my types I will sometimes have to type "private" somewhere.

Obviously I would rather do less typing so I switched over to using "struct". I came from a java background so I had to conciously change my habits to start using "struct", as I had never used it before, I did not even learn the basics of C or C++ until I had been programming in java for two years. My muscle memory always tried to type "class" but now that habit is broken and I always use struct.

What I (and lots of other people) have a tendency to do is to write structs for POD types, and classes for everything else. Of course, you inevitably end up writing a constructor...and frequently a destructor...maybe a copy ctor and a few other ctors...a couple quick functions to do things...

The lines get blurry pretty fast.

I use struct if the (majority of) data members are to be public. Otherwise, class.

I use struct for everything.
A class without any public members is exceedingly rare.