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Data Structures Notes

This document discusses how to store and access elements in multi-dimensional arrays. It explains row-major and column-major storage, and provides formulas to calculate the memory address of elements in n-dimensional arrays based on their indices and the array dimensions.

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Sikander Saqlain
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25 views

Data Structures Notes

This document discusses how to store and access elements in multi-dimensional arrays. It explains row-major and column-major storage, and provides formulas to calculate the memory address of elements in n-dimensional arrays based on their indices and the array dimensions.

Uploaded by

Sikander Saqlain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Multi-Dimensional Arrays:

Suppose we have a 2D array Data with dimensions X=4 and Y=4 with the
following values:

We can access elements by writing Data[x][y] where x=0, 1,…,X-1 and


y=0,1,…Y-1

The total memory taken up by a 2D array can be calculated with:


X * Y * sizeof(data-type)

There are two ways of storing a 2D array in memory, Row major and Column
Major. In Row major, values are stored row after row:
To access the values of the elements the values of x and y would change like
this:

The memory allocation of arrays is contiguous, meaning that there will be no


gap between elements in memory.

Formula for calculating address of elements in a 2D array with dimensions X and


Y is:
&Data[x][y] = BA + (x * Y + y) * sizeof(data-type)

In the above formula, everything is the same as the 1D array’s formula except
“(x * Y + y)”. This part of the formula is used to calculate the slot number of the
elements.

These are the slot


numbers in this array
How to calculate slot numbers for multi-dimensional arrays:

Suppose we have a 4-digit decimal


number:

Each digit has 10 possible values ranging from 0 – 9


If we want to represent the combination of the first two digits in one cell we’ll
write:
d1 * 10 + d0
This is because 10 increments of the first digit result in one increment of the
second digit.
Eg. If d1 = 2 and d0 = 4, This means that d0 has made 2 full cycles from 0-9. So,
using the formula we get: 2 * 10 + 4 = 20 + 4 = 24. With this formula we can give
two digits individually and get a single number that is a combination of both
digits.

Now if we add another digit d2, the formula becomes:


d2 * 100 + d1 * 10 + d0

This is because d2 increases by 1 when d1 has made 10 increments. One


increment of d1 means 10 increments of d0. So, 10 * 10 = 100 increments in
total to increment d2 by 1.

Similarly, if we add a 4th digit, the formula becomes:


d3 * 1000 + d2 * 100 + d1 * 10 + d0

These are the significances of the digits:


We can represent array indexes in a similar way. d0 can be considered Y and d1
can be considered X.

If we have an array with dimensions [X][Y], we can calculate the slot numbers
for the elements using the formula:
xY + y, where x = 0, … , X-1 and y = 0, … , Y-1

If we add another dimension W, the new formula will be:


wXY + xY + y, where w = 0, … , W-1

Now the generalized formula for calculating the memory address of an element
in an n-dimensional array is:
Base address + (slot number formula) + sizeof(data-type)

Suppose we have an n-dimensional array Data[S0][S1][S2]…[Sn-1] where S0,


S1, S2, … Sn-1 are the dimensions of the array.

To access an element from the array we can write Data[I0][I1]…[In-1}


Where I0 = 0, 1…, S0-1 , I1 = 0, 1…, S1-1 and so on.

The formula for the slot number in an n-dimensional array basically follows the
rule that each index I0,I1,I2…In-1 depends on the sizes (S0,S1…) that come
before it. So In-1 doesn’t depend on anything, In-2 depends on Sn-1, In-3
depends on Sn-1 and Sn-2 and so on.
So the general formula to calculate slot number will be:
(I1 * S2 * S3 … * Sn-1) + (I2 * S3 * S4 … Sn-1) + (I3 * S4 * S5 … Sn-1) … (I1 *
Sn-1) + (In-1)

This can be further simplified to:

n−1 n−1
∑ 𝐈𝑗 ∗ ∏ 𝐒𝑘
𝑗=0 𝑘=𝑗+1

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