An array is a data structure that stores a collection of elements, each identified by an index or a key. Elements in an array are stored in contiguous memory locations, and the size of the array is fixed at the time of its creation.
This means that once an array is created, the number of elements it can hold cannot be changed.
An array can store elements of any data type, such as integers, floats, characters, strings, and objects. Each element in an array is accessed using its index, which is an integer value that corresponds to the position of the element in the array.
In most programming languages, arrays are zero-indexed, which means that the first element is at index 0, the second element is at index 1, and so on.
Arrays are commonly used to store and manipulate large sets of data, such as a list of customers, a list of products, or a large matrix of numerical values. They are also used to implement other data structures, such as stacks, queues, and lists.
Arrays are a simple and efficient data structure, but they have some limitations, such as being of fixed size and the elements must be of the same data type.
If you want to store a large amount of data with different data types, have a dynamic size, or have to perform a lot of insertion and deletion operations, you can use other data structures like Linked Lists or Dynamic Arrays.
Example in C:
int arr[MAX_SIZE];In this example, an array of integers called “arr” is created with a maximum size of 100. Each element in the array can be accessed using its index; for example, arr[0] would access the first element in the array, arr[1] would access the second element, and so on.
Example in Python:
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]In this example, an array of integers called “arr” is created with 5 elements. Each element in the array can be accessed using its index; for example, arr[0] would access the first element in the array, arr[1] would access the second element, and so on.
In most programming languages, arrays are zero-indexed, which means the first element is at index 0.
It is important to note that arrays are also available in most of programming languages with different names like list, vector, etc.