Arrays in C

● Arrays are a kind of data structure that can store a fixed-size sequential collection
of elements of the same type.
● An array is used to store a collection of data, but it is often more useful to think
of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.

Instead of declaring individual variables, such as number0, number1, ..., and number99, you
declare one array variable such as numbers and use numbers[0], numbers[1], and ...,
numbers[99] to represent individual variables.

A specific element in an array is accessed by an index.

All arrays consist of contiguous memory locations. The lowest address corresponds to the
first element and the highest address to the last element.

Declaring Arrays
To declare an array in C, a programmer specifies the type of the elements and the
number of elements required by an array as follows −
type arrayName [ arraySize ];

This is called a single-dimensional array. The arraySize must be an integer

constant greater than zero and type can be any valid C data type. For example, to
declare a 10-element array called balance of type double, use this statement −
double balance[10];

Here balance is a variable array which is sufficient to hold up to 10 double

numbers.

Initializing Arrays
You can initialize an array in C either one by one or using a single statement as
follows

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double balance[5] = {1000.0, 2.0, 3.4, 7.0, 50.0};

The number of values between braces { } cannot be larger than the number of
elements that we declare for the array between square brackets [ ].
If you omit the size of the array, an array just big enough to hold the initialization
is created. Therefore, if you write −
double balance[] = {1000.0, 2.0, 3.4, 7.0, 50.0};

You will create exactly the same array as you did in the previous example. Following
is an example to assign a single element of the array −
balance[4] = 50.0;

The above statement assigns the 5th element in the array with a value of 50.0. All
arrays have 0 as the index of their first element which is also called the base
index and the last index of an array will be total size of the array minus 1. Shown
below is the pictorial representation of the array we discussed above −

Accessing Array Elements

An element is accessed by indexing the array name. This is done by placing the
index of the element within square brackets after the name of the array. For
example −
double salary = balance[9];

The above statement will take the 10th element from the array and assign the value
to salary variable. The following example Shows how to use all the three above
mentioned concepts viz. declaration, assignment, and accessing arrays −
Live Demo
#include <stdio.h>

int main () {

int n[ 10 ]; /* n is an array of 10 integers */

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 int i,j;

/* initialize elements of array n to 0 */

for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) {
n[ i ] = i + 100; /* set element at location i to i + 100 */
}

/* output each array element's value */

for (j = 0; j < 10; j++ ) {
printf("Element[%d] = %d\n", j, n[j] );
}

return 0;
}
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −
Element[0] = 100
Element[1] = 101
Element[2] = 102
Element[3] = 103
Element[4] = 104
Element[5] = 105
Element[6] = 106
Element[7] = 107
Element[8] = 108
Element[9] = 109

C programming language allows multidimensional arrays. Here is the general form of a

multidimensional array declaration −
type name[size1][size2]...[sizeN];

For example, the following declaration creates a three dimensional integer array −
int threedim[5][10][4];

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 Two-dimensional Arrays
The simplest form of multidimensional array is the two-dimensional array. A
two-dimensional array is, in essence, a list of one-dimensional arrays. To declare a
two-dimensional integer array of size [x][y], you would write something as follows −
type arrayName [ x ][ y ];

Where type can be any valid C data type and arrayName will be a valid C identifier.
A two-dimensional array can be considered as a table which will have x number of
rows and y number of columns. A two-dimensional array a, which contains three
rows and four columns can be shown as follows:

Thus, every element in the array a is identified by an element name of the form a[ i
][ j ], where 'a' is the name of the array, and 'i' and 'j' are the subscripts that
uniquely identify each element in 'a'.

Initializing Two-Dimensional Arrays

Multidimensional arrays may be initialized by specifying bracketed values for each
row. Following is an array with 3 rows and each row has 4 columns.
int a[3][4] = {
{0, 1, 2, 3} , /* initializers for row indexed by 0 */
{4, 5, 6, 7} , /* initializers for row indexed by 1 */
{8, 9, 10, 11} /* initializers for row indexed by 2 */
};
The nested braces, which indicate the intended row, are optional. The following
initialization is equivalent to the previous example:
int a[3][4] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};

Accessing Two-Dimensional Array Elements

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An element in a two-dimensional array is accessed by using the subscripts, i.e., row
index and column index of the array. For example:
int val = a[2][3];

The above statement will take the 4th element from the 3rd row of the array. You
can verify it in the above figure. Let us check the following program where we have
used a nested loop to handle a two-dimensional array :
Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>

int main () {

/* an array with 5 rows and 2 columns*/

int a[5][2] = { {0,0}, {1,2}, {2,4}, {3,6},{4,8}};
int i, j;

/* output each array element's value */

for ( i = 0; i < 5; i++ ) {

for ( j = 0; j < 2; j++ ) {

printf("a[%d][%d] = %d\n", i,j, a[i][j] );
}
}

return 0;
}
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:
a[0][0]: 0
a[0][1]: 0
a[1][0]: 1
a[1][1]: 2
a[2][0]: 2
a[2][1]: 4
a[3][0]: 3
a[3][1]: 6
a[4][0]: 4
a[4][1]: 8

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