Why are data structures important?

Data structures are important because they allow us to aggregate different data types and treat them as a single entity. For instance, if we have separate variables such as first name, last name and age to represent a person, embedding them into a data structure means we can handle multiple people much more easily:

typedef struct person {

char* first_name;

char* last_name;

unsigned age;

};

struct person[100] people; // An array of 100 person objects.