ARRAYS

Little Boxes on the hillside

Arrays are a data structure which hold multiple variables of the same data type. Consider
the case where a programmer needs to keep track of a number of people within an
organisation. So far, our initial attempt will be to create a specific variable for each user.
This might look like,

int name1 = 101;

int name2 = 232;
int name3 = 231;

It becomes increasingly more difficult to keep track of this as the number of variables
increase. Arrays offer a solution to this problem.

An array is a multi-element box, a bit like a filing cabinet, and uses an indexing system to
find each variable stored within it. In C, indexing starts at zero.

Arrays, like other variables in C, must be declared before they can be used.

The replacement of the above example using arrays looks like,

int names[4];
names[0] = 101;
names[1] = 232;
names[2] = 231;
names[3] = 0;

We created an array called names, which has space for four integer variables. You may
also see that we stored 0 in the last space of the array. This is a common technique used
by C programmers to signify the end of an array.

Arrays have the following syntax, using square brackets to access each indexed value
(called an element).

x[i]

so that x[5] refers to the sixth element in an array called x. In C, array elements start with
0. Assigning values to array elements is done by,

x[10] = g;

and assigning array elements to a variable is done by,

 g = x[10];

In the following example, a character based array named word is declared, and each
element is assigned a character. The last element is filled with a zero value, to signify the
end of the character string (in C, there is no string type, so character based arrays are used
to hold strings). A printf statement is then used to print out all elements of the array.

/* Introducing array's, 2 */
#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
char word[20];

word[0] = 'H';
word[1] = 'e';
word[2] = 'l';
word[3] = 'l';
word[4] = 'o';
word[5] = 0;
printf("The contents of word[] is -->%s\n", word );
}

Sample Program Output

The contents of word[] is Hello

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
int numbers[100];
float averages[20];

numbers[2] = 10;
--numbers[2];
printf("The 3rd element of array numbers is %d\n",
numbers[2]);
}

Sample Program Output

The 3rd element of array numbers is 9

ASSIGNING INITIAL VALUES TO ARRAYS

The declaration is preceded by the word static. The initial values are enclosed in braces,
eg,
 #include <stdio.h>
main()
{
int x;
static int values[] = { 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 };
static char word[] = { 'H','e','l','l','o' };
for( x = 0; x < 9; ++x )
printf("Values [%d] is %d\n", x, values[x]);
}

Sample Program Output

Values[0] is 1
Values[1] is 2
....
Values[8] is 9

Two Dimensional Array

=============

Declaration
========
type array_name[m][n]

ex

int twodim[3][4];

It is a two dimenstional array with 3 rows and two columns.

Col1 col2 col3 col4

Row1 [0][0] [0][1] [0][2] [0][3]

Row2 [1][0] [1][1] [1][2] [1][3]
Row3 [2][0] [2][1] [2][2] [2][3]

Elements in a two dimenstional array can be accessed by menas of row and colum.

Array declaration
============
int values[3][4]={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}

values[0][0]=1 values[0][1]=2 values[0][2]=3 values[0][3]=4

values[1][0]=5 values[1][1]=6 values[1][2]=7 values[1][3]=8
values[2][0]=9 values[2][1]=10 values[2][2]=11 values[2][3]=12