Structure Templates?

[habrams]

I'm just moving to VB.Net from Delphi, and I'm trying to find the equivalent to a Record Type. In Delphi, a record is equivalent to a VB STRUCTURE, and a record type defines the layout of the STRUCTURE so that I subsequently can define variables of that specific form. I could use a CLASS but I hate to incorporate the overhead of a reference-type object.

Is there some way in VB to create a template for subsequent variables? If so, is there a more general way to create user-defined variable templates that the compiler will check for assignment consistency (so that, for example, a NameString cannot be assigned to a variable of type AddressString even though both are Strings)?

Thanks in advance.

Howard