COMP 1633: Intro to CS II

More Arrays
Charlotte Curtis
October 9, 2024
Where we left off
Arrays vs Python lists
C-style arrays
Array indexing
Passing arrays to functions, with and without const

Textbook Chapter 7

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Today's topics
Partially filled arrays
Multi-dimensional arrays
C-style strings

Textbook Sections 7, 8.1

Assignment 1: Grace period extended to Tuesday at 5 PM due to Thanksgiving

I will answer any emails sent over the weekend on Tuesday

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 But first, a note on % ...
The % operator doesn't behave the same way in C++ as it does in Python

Python C++

print(30 % 27) # 3 cout << 30 % 27 << endl; // 3

print(-30 % 27) # 24 cout << -30 % 27 << endl; // -3

For assignment 1: make sure to test with negative shifts!

Think about how you might handle this case

See the Wikipedia article for more info 3

Summary of array passing
Any size indicated in the [] of the function header is ignored
The function receives a pointer to the first element of the array
sizeof information is lost

We'll talk more about pointers next week

Pass the size of the array as a separate parameter to have flexible functions
Arrays are always passed by reference, no & needed (or allowed)
If you only want to read the array, use const

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Returning arrays from functions
Short answer: you can't! The following does not compile:

int [] fibonacci(int n) {
int fib[n] = {1, 1};
for (int i = 2; i < n; i++) {
fib[i] = fib[i-1] + fib[i-2];
}
return fib;
}

Arrays must be declared outside the function, then passed by reference to be

modified

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Partially filled arrays
Arrays of fixed-length seem quite limiting, especially coming from Python

high_temps = []
temp = float(input("Enter the next temperature: "))
while temp != -100:
high_temps.append(temp)
temp = float(input("Enter the next temperature: "))

A workaround for C-style arrays is to allocate the maximum size you think you
might need, then keep track of the fill size of the array

This is called a partially filled array

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Partially filled array example
const int MAX_SIZE = 30;
double high_temps[MAX_SIZE] = {};
int num_temps = 0;
double temp = 0;
cout << "Enter the next temperature: ";
cin >> temp;
while (temp != -100 && num_temps < MAX_SIZE) {
high_temps[num_temps] = temp;
num_temps++;
cout << "Enter the next temperature: ";
cin >> temp;
}

Which is the fill size of the array?

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Multi-dimensional arrays
So far we've only looked at one-dimensional arrays

Just like Python's list of lists, we can define 2D arrays in C++:

connect4 = [] const int ROWS = 6;

for i in range(6): const int COLS = 7;
connect4.append([' '] * 7) char connect4[ROWS][COLS] = {};

Typically we think of the first dimension as the rows, the second as the columns

The data type of each "row" is (in this example) char[7]

This is different from a char[6] or a char[8] - the size is part of the type

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Multi-dimensions means multiple loops
To process a 2D array, you'll (almost always) need nested loops
for (int r = 0; r < ROWS; r++) {
for (int c = 0; c < COLS; c++) {
cout << connect4[r][c];
}
cout << endl;
}

Be careful with the order of the loops and indexing

connect4[r][c] is the c th element of the r th row

What if we wrote connect4[c][r] instead?

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Passing multi-dimensional arrays to functions
Multidimensional arrays are passed by reference just like 1D arrays
An initialization function might have the following prototype:
void initialize(char connect4[][COLS], int size);

Like 1D arrays, the first dimension is ignored, however...

The second dimension must be specified, and it must be a constant!
This is because we have an array of char[COLS] elements
Let's see what Python Tutor sees

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Processing row by row
Depending on the data, you might want to process one row at a time:

bool win = false;

for (int r = 0; r < ROW; r++) {
win = win || check_row(connect4[r]);
}

What should the function prototype for check_row be?

How could you process column by column?

Practice time!

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C-style strings
C-style strings are arrays of characters
We said that you can't do this:
int primes[] = {2, 3, 5, 7, 11};
cout << primes << endl;

But what about this?

char vowels[] = {'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'};
cout << vowels << endl;

We've almost got a C-style string here, but not quite

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The null terminator
Issue: how long should the string be?
We could keep track of a partially filled array size, like this:
char letters[26] = {'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'};
int fill = 5;

Or, we could use a null terminator:

char letters[26] = {'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', '\0'};

The null terminator is a sentinel that marks the end of the string

An array of char s is not a C-string until it has a null terminator!

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C-string shorthand
C++ has a shorthand for initializing C-strings:
char vowels[] = "aeiou";

The null terminator is automatically added

The length is one more than the number of characters
What happens in the following initializations?
char a_ch = 'a';
char a_str[] = "a";
char greeting[32] = "Hello!";
char hello[6] = "Hello!";

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Some C-string gotchas
Initializing with a string literal is a shorthand - the following are identical:

char message[] = "Hello!";

char message2[] = {'H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '!', '\0'};

This means that you cannot reassign a C-string, just as you can only use the curly
bracket syntax when initializing an array

You can reassign individual characters:

char message[] = "Hello!";

message[0] = 'G';

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C-strings plus functions
Since a C-string always has a null terminator, no need to pass the size
Example: a function to calculate the length of a string
int len(const char str[]) {
int length = 0;
while (str[length] != '\0') {
length++;
}
return length;
}

This is so common that C++ provides a function strlen in the <cstring> library,
along with other useful string manipulation functions

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Coming up next
Assignment 1 is due Friday
Assignment 2 will be released Friday (lots of 2D arrays!)
Reading week already! No classes next week
I will be available by email and for office hours after the Monday holiday
After the break: More on C-strings, file I/O and command line arguments

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