Arrays can be used to store data of various types such as integers, floating-point numbers, characters, and even objects. They are a fundamental data structure used in many programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, and JavaScript.
Arrays offer several advantages, including:
- Efficient access: Since elements in an array are stored contiguously in memory, accessing an element is very fast, as the memory address can be computed using the index of the element.
- Random access: Elements in an array can be accessed randomly, which means that you can access any element in the array in constant time.
- Compactness: Since the elements of an array are stored in a contiguous block of memory, arrays take up less space than other data structures like linked lists.
- Iteration: Arrays can be easily traversed using loops, making it easy to perform operations on all the elements of an array.
However, arrays also have some limitations, such as fixed size (which means that the size of the array cannot be changed once it is created), and slow insertion and deletion of elements in the middle of the array.
Real-time examples of an array include:
- A list of student grades for a particular class.
- A list of names of employees in a company.
- A list of items in an online shopping cart.
// Code for creating an array #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { int arr[5] = {1,2,3,4,5}; // Initialize an array of size 5 for(int i = 0; i<5; i++) { cout<<arr[i]<<" "; // Prints 1 2 3 4 5 } }
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