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Composite data type

Programming language construct

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated March 7, 2026

In computer science, a composite data type or compound data type is a data type that consists of programming language scalar data types and other composite types that may be heterogeneous and hierarchical in nature. It is sometimes called a structure or a record or by a language-specific keyword used to define one such as struct. It falls into the aggregate type classification which includes homogenous collections such as the array and list.

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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Composite data type”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Object composition

In computer science, object composition and object aggregation are closely related ways to combine objects or data types into more complex ones. In conversation, the distinction between composition and aggregation is often ignored.

Record (computer science)

In computer science, a record, or compound data type) is a composite data structure, a collection of fields, possibly of different data types, typically fixed in number and sequence. For example, a date could be stored as a record containing a numeric year field, a month field represented as a string, and a numeric day-of-month field.

Scalar (mathematics)

In mathematics, more specifically in linear algebra, a scalar is an element of a field which is used to define a vector space through the operation of scalar multiplication: a vector multiplied by a scalar (denoted a) produces another vector (av). Real numbers and complex numbers may be used as scalars in real and complex vector spaces, respectively.