Sometimes, it is useful to have a structure with multiple representations. This may be achieved with properties, but there is also a more direct way of doing it: using unions and anonymous structs. We'll create a Color structure with both RGBA and array representations.
To create a structure with two views into the same data, we need to execute the following steps:
Write a struct to contain your type.
Add a union without a name to hold the alternative representations.
In the union, add the views. Be sure they match up in size and binary layout. For our
Colorstruct, we'll want it to be represented by an array ofubyteswith each byte also having a name.For the names, write a nameless
structwith each named member.When using the structure, use the names directly.
To implement the preceding steps, we will have to execute the following code:
struct Color {
union {
ubyte[4] rgba;
struct {
ubyte r;
...