Scribd
Upload
19 views

4 1 1 Array Initialization

Array elements can be initialized when the array is defined by enclosing initial values in braces. If there are fewer initializers than elements, remaining elements are initialized to 0. The array dimension may be omitted if an initializer is provided, and the compiler will infer the size. String constants can also initialize character arrays, with the array size inferred from the string length plus a null terminator.

Uploaded by

gdskumar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
19 views

4 1 1 Array Initialization

Array elements can be initialized when the array is defined by enclosing initial values in braces. If there are fewer initializers than elements, remaining elements are initialized to 0. The array dimension may be omitted if an initializer is provided, and the compiler will infer the size. String constants can also initialize character arrays, with the array size inferred from the string length plus a null terminator.

Uploaded by

gdskumar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

4.1.

1 Array Initialization

Although it is not possible to assign to all elements of an array at once using an


assignment expression, it is possible to initialize some or all elements of an array when
the array is defined. The syntax looks like this:

int a[10] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9};


The list of values, enclosed in braces {}, separated by commas, provides the initial values
for successive elements of the array.

(Under older, pre-ANSI C compilers, you could not always supply initializers for ``local''
arrays inside functions; you could only initialize ``global'' arrays, those outside of any
function. Those compilers are now rare, so you shouldn't have to worry about this
distinction any more. We'll talk more about local and global variables later in this
chapter.)

If there are fewer initializers than elements in the array, the remaining elements are
automatically initialized to 0. For example,

int a[10] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6};


would initialize a[7], a[8], and a[9] to 0. When an array definition includes an
initializer, the array dimension may be omitted, and the compiler will infer the dimension
from the number of initializers. For example,
int b[] = {10, 11, 12, 13, 14};
would declare, define, and initialize an array b of 5 elements (i.e. just as if you'd typed
int b[5]). Only the dimension is omitted; the brackets [] remain to indicate that b is in
fact an array.

In the case of arrays of char, the initializer may be a string constant:

char s1[7] = "Hello,";


char s2[10] = "there,";
char s3[] = "world!";
As before, if the dimension is omitted, it is inferred from the size of the string initializer.
(We haven't covered strings in detail yet--we'll do so in chapter 8--but it turns out that all
strings in C are terminated by a special character with the value 0. Therefore, the array s3
will be of size 7, and the explicitly-sized s1 does need to be of size at least 7. For s2, the
last 4 characters in the array will all end up being this zero-value character.)

You might also like