Arrays occupy space in memory. To specify the type of
the elements and the number of elements required by an array use a declaration
of the form:
type arrayName[ arraySize ];
The compiler reserves the
appropriate amount of memory. (Recall that a declaration which reserves memory
is more properly known as a definition in C++.) The arraySize must be an
integer constant greater than zero. For example, to tell the compiler to reserve
12 elements for integer array c, use the declaration
int c[ 12 ]; // c is an array of 12 integers
Memory can be reserved for several
arrays with a single declaration. The following declaration reserves 100
elements for the integer array b and 27 elements for the integer array x.
int b[ 100 ], // b is an array of 100 integers
x[ 27 ]; // x is an array of 27 integers
Good Programming Practice 7.1
We declare
one array per declaration for readability, modifiability and ease of
commenting.
Arrays can be declared to contain values
of any nonreference data type. For example, an array of type char can be used to store a character string. Until now, we have
used string objects to store character strings. Section
7.4 introduces using character arrays to store
strings. Character strings and their similarity to arrays (a relationship C++
inherited from C), and the relationship between pointers and arrays, are
discussed in Chapter
8.
