Storing Similar Data Items
In last Chapter you learned about pointers and the concept of indirection. In this lesson you'll learn about arrays, which are collections of similar data items and are closely related to pointers. The main topics covered in this lesson are
Single-dimension arrays
Indexing arrays
Pointers and arrays
Character arrays
Multidimensional arrays
Unsized arrays
Summary
In this lesson you've learned the following:
- An array is a collection of variables that are of the same data type.
- In C, the index to an array starts at 0.
- You can initialize each individual element of an array after the declaration of the array, or you can place all initial values into a data block surrounded by { and } during the declaration of an array.
- The memory storage taken by an array is determined by the product of the size of the data type and the dimensions of the array.
- A pointer is said to refer to an array when the address of the first element in the array is assigned to the pointer. The address of the first element in an array is also called the start address of the array.
- To assign the start address of an array to a pointer, you can either put the combination of the address-of operator (&) and the first element name of the array, or simply use the array name, on the right side of an assignment operator (=).
- A character array is considered a character string in C if the last element in the array contains a null character (\0).
- The null character (\0) marks the end of a string. C functions, such as printf(), will stop processing the string when the null character is encountered.
- C supports multidimensional arrays, too. A pair of brackets (the array subscript operator—[ and ]) indicates a dimension.
- The compiler can automatically calculate the memory space needed by an unsized array.
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