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Struct types

Learn how Ice structs are mapped to C#

An Ice struct maps to a partial record struct with the same name.

Consider the following Ice struct:

ice

struct Point
{
    double x;
    double y;
}

The Ice compiler maps Point to C# as shown below:

public partial record struct Point
{
    public double X { get; set; }
    public double Y { get; set; }

    /// <summary>Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="Point" /> struct.</summary>
    public Point(double X, double Y)
    {
        this.X = X;
        this.Y = Y;
    }

    /// <summary>Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="Point" /> struct from an IceDecoder.</summary>
    public Point(ref IceDecoder decoder)
    {
        this.X = decoder.DecodeDouble();
        this.Y = decoder.DecodeDouble();
    }

    /// <summary>Encodes the fields of this struct with an Ice encoder.</summary>
    public readonly void Encode(ref IceEncoder encoder)
    {
        encoder.EncodeDouble(this.X);
        encoder.EncodeDouble(this.Y);
    }
}

The mapped C# record struct provides a primary constructor with parameters for all its fields, and also a decoding constructor that constructs a new instance by decoding its fields from an IceDecoder. The generated Encode method encodes the struct fields with an IceEncoder.

cs:readonly metadata directive

You can map an Ice struct to a readonly C# struct with the "cs:readonly" metadata directive. For example:

ice

["cs:readonly"]
struct Point
{
    double x;
    double y;
}

public readonly partial record struct Point
{
    public double X { get; init; }
    public double Y { get; init; }

    ...
}

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Learn how Ice structs are mapped to C#

cs:readonly metadata directive

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