Structs

Instead of defining a type with class you can do so with struct:

struct Point
  property x
  property y

  def initialize(@x, @y)
  end
end

The differences between a struct and a class are:

• Invoking new on a struct allocates it on the stack instead of the heap
• A struct is passed by value while a class is passed by reference
• A struct implicitly inherits from Struct, which inherits from Value. A class implicitly inherits from Reference.

A struct can inherit from other structs and can also includes modules. A struct can be generic, just like a class.

A struct is mostly used for performance reasons to avoid lots of small memory allocations when passing small copies might be more efficient.

So how do you choose between a struct and a class? The rule of thumb is that if no instance variable is ever reassigned, i.e. your type is immutable, you can use a struct, otherwise use a class.