Programming Language

Arrays and Strings

Content
• Arrays Introduction
• Single and Multidimensional Arrays
• Organizing Array Elements
• Strings Introduction
• String Constant
• String Variable
• String I/O Functions (gets() and puts())
• Array of Strings

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C++ Arrays
• Arrays are used to store multiple values in a single variable, instead of
declaring separate variables for each value.
• To declare an array, define the variable type, specify the name of the array
followed by square brackets and specify the number of elements it should
store:
string cars[4];
• We have now declared a variable that holds an array of four strings. To
insert values to it, we can use an array literal - place the values in a comma-
separated list, inside curly braces:
string cars[4] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda"};
To create an array of three integers, you could write:
int myNum[3] = {10, 20, 30};

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Access the Elements of an Array
• You access an array element by referring to the index number.
• This statement accesses the value of the first element in cars:
string cars[4] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda"};
cout << cars[0];
// Outputs Volvo

• Note: Array indexes start with 0: [0] is the first element. [1] is the
second element, etc.

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Change an Array Element
• To change the value of a specific element, refer to the index number:
cars[0] = "Opel";

string cars[4] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda"};

cars[0] = "Opel";
cout << cars[0];
// Now outputs Opel instead of Volvo

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Loop Through an Array
• You can loop through the array elements with the for loop.
• The following example outputs all elements in the cars array:

string cars[4] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda"};

for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
cout << cars[i] << "\n";
}//output
Volvo
BMW
Ford
Mazda

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Loop Through an Array
• The following example outputs the index of each element together
with its value:
string cars[4] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda"};
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
cout << i << ": " << cars[i] << "\n";
}//output
0: Volvo
1: BMW
2: Ford
3: Mazda

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Omit Array Size
• You don't have to specify the size of the array.
• But if you don't, it will only be as big as the elements that are inserted
into it:
string cars[] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford"};
// size of array is always 3
This is completely fine.

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Omit Array Size
However, the problem arise if you want extra space for future
elements.
Then you have to overwrite the existing values:

string cars[] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford"};

string cars[] =
{"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda", "Tesla"};

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Omit Array Size
• If you specify the size however, the array will reserve the extra space:
string cars[5] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford"};
// size of array is 5, even though it's only three
elements inside it
• Now you can add a fourth and fifth element without overwriting the
others:
cars[3] = {"Mazda"};
cars[4] = {"Tesla"};

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Omit Elements on Declaration
• It is also possible to declare an array without specifying the elements
on declaration, and add them later:
string cars[5];
cars[0] = {"Volvo"};
cars[1] = {"BMW"};
...

11
C++ Multidimensional Arrays
• In C++, we can create an array of an array, known as a
multidimensional array.
• For example: int x[3][4];
• Here, x is a two-dimensional array.
• It can hold a maximum of 12 elements.

• We can think of this array as a table with 3 rows and each row has 4
columns as shown.

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C++ Multidimensional Arrays
• Three-dimensional arrays also work in a similar way.
• For example: float x[2][4][3];
• This array x can hold a maximum of 24 elements.
• We can find out the total number of elements in the array simply by
multiplying its dimensions:
2 x 4 x 3 = 24

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Multidimensional Array Initialization
• Like a normal array, we can initialize a multidimensional array in more
than one way.
Initialization of two-dimensional array:
int test[2][3] = {2, 4, 5, 9, 0, 19};

• The above method is not preferred. A better way to initialize this

array with the same array elements is given below:
int test[2][3] = { {2, 4, 5}, {9, 0, 19}};
• This array has 2 rows and 3 columns, which is why we have two rows
of elements with 3 elements each.
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Multidimensional Array Initialization
Initialization of three-dimensional array:
int test[2][3][4] = {3, 4, 2, 3, 0, -3, 9, 11, 23, 12, 23,
2, 13, 4, 56, 3, 5, 9, 3, 5, 5, 1, 4, 9};
• This is not a good way of initializing a three-dimensional array. A
better way to initialize this array is:
int test[2][3][4] = {
{ {3, 4, 2, 3}, {0, -3, 9, 11}, {23, 12, 23, 2} },
{ {13, 4, 56, 3}, {5, 9, 3, 5}, {5, 1, 4, 9} }
};

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Two-Dimensional Array Example

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Creating References
• A reference variable is a "reference" to an existing variable, and it is
created with the & operator:
string food = "Pizza"; // food variable
string &meal = food; // reference to food
• Now, we can use either the variable name food or the reference name
meal to refer to the food variable:
string food = "Pizza";
string &meal = food;
cout << food << "\n"; // Outputs Pizza
cout << meal << "\n"; // Outputs Pizza
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C++ Strings
• Strings are used for storing text.
• A string variable contains a collection of characters surrounded by
double quotes:
• Create a variable of type string and assign it a value:
string greeting = "Hello";
• To use strings, you must include an additional header file in the
source code, the <string> library:

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C++ Strings Example

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String Concatenation
• The + operator can be used between strings to add them together to
make a new string. This is called concatenation:
string firstName = "John ";
string lastName = "Doe";
string fullName = firstName + lastName;
cout << fullName;
• In the example above, we added a space after firstName to create a
space between John and Doe on output.
• However, you could also add a space with quotes ("
" or ' ‘).

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Append
• A string in C++ is actually an object, which contain functions that can
perform certain operations on strings. For example, you can also
concatenate strings with the append() function:
string firstName = "John ";
string lastName = "Doe";
string fullName = firstName.append(lastName);
cout << fullName;
//output: John Doe
• It is up to you whether you want to use + or append().
• The major difference between the two, is that the append() function is
much faster.
• However, for testing and such, it might be easier to just use +.

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Adding Numbers and Strings
• C++ uses the + operator for both addition and concatenation.
• Numbers are added. Strings are concatenated.
• If you add two numbers, the result will be a number:
int x = 10;
int y = 20;
int z = x + y; // z will be 30 (an integer)
• If you add two strings, the result will be a string concatenation:
string x = "10";
string y = "20";
string z = x + y; // z will be 1020 (a string)

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Adding Numbers and Strings
• If you try to add a number to a string, an error occurs:
string x = "10";
int y = 20;
string z = x + y;

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String Length
• To get the length of a string, use the length() function:
string txt = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
cout << "The length of the txt string is: " <<
txt.length();
//output: The length of the txt string is: 26
• Tip: You might see some C++ programs that use the size() function to
get the length of a string. This is just an alias of length(). It is
completely up to you if you want to use length() or size():
string txt = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
cout << "The length of the txt string is: " << txt.size();
//output: The length of the txt string is: 26

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Access Strings
• You can access the characters in a string by referring to its index number
inside square brackets [].
• This example prints the first character in myString:
string myString = "Hello";
cout << myString[0];
// Outputs H
Note: String indexes start with 0: [0] is the first character. [1] is the second character,
etc.
• This example prints the second character in myString:
string myString = "Hello";
cout << myString[1];
// Outputs e

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Change String Characters
• To change the value of a specific character in a string, refer to the
index number, and use single quotes:
string myString = "Hello";
myString[0] = 'J';
cout << myString;
// Outputs Jello instead of Hello

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User Input Strings
• It is possible to use the extraction operator >> on cin to display a
string entered by a user:
string firstName;
cout << "Type your first name: ";
cin >> firstName; // get user input from the keyboard
cout << "Your name is: " << firstName;
// Type your first name: John
// Your name is: John
• However, cin considers a space (whitespace, tabs, etc) as a
terminating character, which means that it can only display a single
word (even if you type many words):

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User Input Strings
string fullName;
cout << "Type your full name: ";
cin >> fullName;
cout << "Your name is: " << fullName;
// Type your full name: John Doe
// Your name is: John
• From the example above, you would expect the program to print
"John Doe", but it only prints "John".
• That's why, when working with strings, we often use the getline()
function to read a line of text.
• It takes cin as the first parameter, and the string variable as second.
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User Input Strings
string fullName;
cout << "Type your full name: ";
getline (cin, fullName);
cout << "Your name is: " << fullName;

// Type your full name: John Doe

// Your name is: John Doe

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Omitting Namespace
• You might see some C++ programs that runs without the standard
namespace library.
• The using namespace std line can be omitted and replaced with the std
keyword, followed by the :: operator for string (and cout) objects:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
int main() {
std::string greeting = "Hello";
std::cout << greeting;
return 0;
}
• It is up to you if you want to include the standard namespace library or not.

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How gets() function works?

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How puts() function works?

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What is an Array of Strings?
• A string is a 1-D array of characters, so an array of strings is a 2-D array of
characters.
• Just like we can create a 2-D array of int, float etc;
• We can also create a 2-D array of character or array of strings.
• Here is how we can declare a 2-D array of characters.
char ch_arr[3][10] = {
{'s', 'p', 'i', 'k', 'e', '\0'},
{'t', 'o', 'm','\0'},
{'j', 'e', 'r', 'r', 'y','\0'}
};
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Array of Strings
• It is important to end each 1-D array by the null character ('\0'), otherwise,
it will be just an array of characters.
• We can't use them as strings.
• Declaring an array of strings this way is rather tedious, that's why C
provides an alternative syntax to achieve the same thing.
• This above initialization is equivalent to:
char ch_arr[3][10] = {
"spike",
"tom",
"jerry"
};

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Array of Strings

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