Value types basically represents immutable concepts. Fx, it makes no sense to have a mathematical value such as an integer, vector etc. and then be able to modify it. That would be like redefining the meaning of a value. Instead of changing a value type, it makes more sense to assign another unique value. Think about the fact that value types are compared by comparing all the values of its properties. The point is that if the properties are the same then it is the same universal representation of that value.

正如Konrad所提到的，更改日期也没有意义，因为值代表的是唯一的时间点，而不是具有任何状态或上下文依赖关系的时间对象的实例。

希望这能让你明白。可以肯定的是，它更多的是关于您试图用值类型捕获的概念，而不是实际的细节。

如果你坚持结构体的用途(在c#、Visual Basic 6、Pascal/Delphi、c++结构类型(或类)中，当它们不用作指针时)，你会发现结构体只不过是一个复合变量。这意味着:您将把它们视为一个通用名称(您引用成员的记录变量)下的一组变量。

我知道这会让很多习惯于面向对象编程的人感到困惑，但如果使用得当，这并不是说这些东西本质上是邪恶的理由。有些结构按照它们的意图是不可变的(Python的namedtuple就是这种情况)，但这是另一种需要考虑的范例。

是的:结构体涉及大量内存，但它不会精确地通过执行以下操作来增加内存:

point.x = point.x + 1

相比:

point = Point(point.x + 1, point.y)

在不可变的情况下，内存消耗至少是相同的，甚至更多(尽管这种情况对于当前堆栈来说是临时的，这取决于语言)。

But, finally, structures are structures, not objects. In POO, the main property of an object is their identity, which most of the times is not more than its memory address. Struct stands for data structure (not a proper object, and so they don't have identity anyhow), and data can be modified. In other languages, record (instead of struct, as is the case for Pascal) is the word and holds the same purpose: just a data record variable, intended to be read from files, modified, and dumped into files (that is the main use and, in many languages, you can even define data alignment in the record, while that's not necessarily the case for properly called Objects).

Want a good example? Structs are used to read files easily. Python has this library because, since it is object-oriented and has no support for structs, it had to implement it in another way, which is somewhat ugly. Languages implementing structs have that feature... built-in. Try reading a bitmap header with an appropriate struct in languages like Pascal or C. It will be easy (if the struct is properly built and aligned; in Pascal you would not use a record-based access but functions to read arbitrary binary data). So, for files and direct (local) memory access, structs are better than objects. As for today, we're used to JSON and XML, and so we forget the use of binary files (and as a side effect, the use of structs). But yes: they exist, and have a purpose.

他们并不邪恶。只要把它们用在正确的地方。

如果你从锤子的角度思考，你会想把螺丝当作钉子，发现螺丝更难扎进墙里，这将是螺丝的错，它们将是邪恶的。

我不会说可变性是邪恶的，但可变性通常是程序员急于提供最大功能的标志。在现实中，这通常是不需要的，反过来，使界面更小，更容易使用，更难使用错误(=更健壮)。

其中一个例子就是竞态条件中的读/写和写/写冲突。这些在不可变结构中根本不可能发生，因为写操作不是有效的操作。

另外，我认为可变性几乎从来都不是真正需要的，程序员只是认为它在未来可能会出现。例如，改变日期是没有意义的。相反，在旧日期的基础上创建一个新的日期。这是一个廉价的操作，所以性能不是一个考虑因素。

它与结构无关(也与c#无关)，但在Java中，当可变对象是哈希映射中的键时，你可能会遇到问题。如果你在将它们添加到映射后更改它们，它也更改了哈希代码，可能会发生糟糕的事情。

具有公共可变字段或属性的结构并不邪恶。

Struct methods (as distinct from property setters) which mutate "this" are somewhat evil, only because .net doesn't provide a means of distinguishing them from methods which do not. Struct methods that do not mutate "this" should be invokable even on read-only structs without any need for defensive copying. Methods which do mutate "this" should not be invokable at all on read-only structs. Since .net doesn't want to forbid struct methods that don't modify "this" from being invoked on read-only structs, but doesn't want to allow read-only structs to be mutated, it defensively copies structs in read-only contexts, arguably getting the worst of both worlds.

尽管在只读上下文中处理自突变方法存在问题，但是，可变结构通常提供的语义要比可变类类型优越得多。考虑以下三个方法签名:

struct PointyStruct {public int x,y,z;};
class PointyClass {public int x,y,z;};

void Method1(PointyStruct foo);
void Method2(ref PointyStruct foo);
void Method3(PointyClass foo);

对于每种方法，请回答以下问题:

假设该方法没有使用任何“不安全”代码，它会修改foo吗? 如果在调用方法之前没有对'foo'的外部引用，那么在调用方法之后是否可以存在外部引用?

答案:

问题1: Method1(): no(意图明确) Method2(): yes(明确的意图) Method3(): yes(不确定意图) 问题2: Method1():没有 Method2(): no(除非不安全) Method3():是的

Method1 can't modify foo, and never gets a reference. Method2 gets a short-lived reference to foo, which it can use modify the fields of foo any number of times, in any order, until it returns, but it can't persist that reference. Before Method2 returns, unless it uses unsafe code, any and all copies that might have been made of its 'foo' reference will have disappeared. Method3, unlike Method2, gets a promiscuously-sharable reference to foo, and there's no telling what it might do with it. It might not change foo at all, it might change foo and then return, or it might give a reference to foo to another thread which might mutate it in some arbitrary way at some arbitrary future time. The only way to limit what Method3 might do to a mutable class object passed into it would be to encapsulate the mutable object into a read-only wrapper, which is ugly and cumbersome.

结构数组提供了美妙的语义。给定矩形类型的RectArray[500]，如何将元素123复制到元素456，然后在不影响元素456的情况下，将元素123的宽度设置为555是显而易见的。"RectArray[432] = RectArray[321];…;RectArray[123]。宽度= 555;"。知道Rectangle是一个具有名为Width的整数字段的结构体，就可以知道关于上述语句的所有信息。

Now suppose RectClass was a class with the same fields as Rectangle and one wanted to do the same operations on a RectClassArray[500] of type RectClass. Perhaps the array is supposed to hold 500 pre-initialized immutable references to mutable RectClass objects. in that case, the proper code would be something like "RectClassArray[321].SetBounds(RectClassArray[456]); ...; RectClassArray[321].X = 555;". Perhaps the array is assumed to hold instances that aren't going to change, so the proper code would be more like "RectClassArray[321] = RectClassArray[456]; ...; RectClassArray[321] = New RectClass(RectClassArray[321]); RectClassArray[321].X = 555;" To know what one is supposed to do, one would have to know a lot more both about RectClass (e.g. does it support a copy constructor, a copy-from method, etc.) and the intended usage of the array. Nowhere near as clean as using a struct.

To be sure, there is unfortunately no nice way for any container class other than an array to offer the clean semantics of a struct array. The best one could do, if one wanted a collection to be indexed with e.g. a string, would probably be to offer a generic "ActOnItem" method which would accept a string for the index, a generic parameter, and a delegate which would be passed by reference both the generic parameter and the collection item. That would allow nearly the same semantics as struct arrays, but unless the vb.net and C# people can be pursuaded to offer a nice syntax, the code is going to be clunky-looking even if it is reasonably performance (passing a generic parameter would allow for use of a static delegate and would avoid any need to create any temporary class instances).

就我个人而言，我对Eric Lippert等人对可变值类型的憎恨感到恼火。它们提供了比到处使用的混杂引用类型清晰得多的语义。尽管.net对值类型的支持有一些限制，但在许多情况下，可变值类型比任何其他类型的实体都更适合。

可变数据有许多优点和缺点。最大的缺点就是别名。如果相同的值在多个地方使用，其中一个地方更改了它，那么它将神奇地更改到正在使用它的其他地方。这与竞态条件有关，但并不完全相同。

有时候，价值百万美元的优势是模块化。可变状态允许您向代码隐藏更改的信息，而代码不需要知道这些信息。

《解释器的艺术》详细讨论了这些权衡，并给出了一些例子。