C Academy · Lesson

Unions and Memory Efficiency

Understand the differences between struct and union and how unions optimize memory usage.

1

A union is a special data type that allows storing different data types in the same memory location.

In this lesson, you will learn:

A union is similar to a structure, but all members share the same memory space.

Example:

union Data {
    int i;
    float f;
    char str[20];
};

Here, i, f, and str share the same memory location.