Бірнеше дерек типін сақтауға қабілетті айнымалылар (Union)

Variable able to hold different data types

In computer science, a union is a value that may have any of several representations or formats within the same position in memory; that consists of a variable that may hold such a data structure. Some programming languages support special data types, called union types, to describe such values and variables. In other words, a union type definition will specify which of a number of permitted primitive types may be stored in its instances, e. g., "float or long integer". In contrast with a record (or structure), which could be defined to contain both a float and an integer; in a union, there is only one value at any given time. A union can be pictured as a chunk of memory that is used to store variables of different data types. Once a new value is assigned to a field, the existing data is overwritten with the new data. The memory area storing the value has no intrinsic type (other than just bytes or words of memory), but the value can be treated as one of several abstract data types, having the type of the value that was last written to the memory area. In type theory, a union has a sum type; this corresponds to disjoint union in mathematics. Depending on the language and type, a union value may be used in some operations, such as assignment and comparison for equality, without knowing its specific type. Other operations may require that knowledge, either by some external information, or by the use of a tagged union.

Because of the limitations of their use, untagged unions are generally only provided in untyped languages or in a type unsafe way (as in C). They have the advantage over simple tagged unions of not requiring space to store a data type tag. The name "union" stems from the type's formal definition. If a type is considered as the set of all values that that type can take on, a union type is simply the mathematical union of its constituting types, since it can take on any value any of its fields can. Also, because a mathematical union discards duplicates, if more than one field of the union can take on a single common value, it is impossible to tell from the value alone which field was last written. However, one useful programming function of unions is to map smaller data elements to larger ones for easier manipulation. A data structure consisting, for example, of 4 bytes and a 32 bit integer, can form a union with an unsigned 64 bit integer, and thus be more readily accessed for purposes of comparison etc.

In C and C++, untagged unions are expressed nearly exactly like structures (structs), except that each data member begins at the same location in memory. The data members, as in structures, need not be primitive values, and in fact may be structures or even other unions. C++ (since C++11) also allows for a data member to be any type that has a full fledged constructor/destructor and/or copy constructor, or a non trivial copy assignment operator. For example, it is possible to have the standard C++ string as a member of a union. The primary use of a union is allowing access to a common location by different data types, for example hardware input/output access, bitfield and word sharing, or type punning. Unions can also provide low level polymorphism. However, there is no checking of types, so it is up to the programmer to be sure that the proper fields are accessed in different contexts. The relevant field of a union variable is typically determined by the state of other variables, possibly in an enclosing struct. One common C programming idiom uses unions to perform what C++ calls a reinterpret cast, by assigning to one field of a union and reading from another, as is done in code which depends on the raw representation of the values. A practical example is the method of computing square roots using the IEEE representation. This is not, however, a safe use of unions in general. Structure and union specifiers have the same form. [ . ] The size of a union is sufficient to contain the largest of its members. The value of at most one of the members can be stored in a union object at any time. A pointer to a union object, suitably converted, points to each of its members (or if a member is a bit field, then to the unit in which it resides), and vice versa.|ANSI/ISO 9899:1990 (the ANSI C standard) Section 6.5.2.1

In compilers such as GCC, Clang, and IBM XL C for AIX, a attribute is available for union types. Types contained in the union can be converted transparently to the union type itself in a function call, provided that all types have the same size. It is mainly intended for function with multiple parameter interfaces, a use necessitated by early Unix extensions and later re standarisation.