Arrays
Learn how to define and access arrays, and why it's important to know how arrays are implemented in C .
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An array in C is a set of items that are stored in consecutive memory locations. So far we have seen how we can use a variable to store a single value. Arrays are useful as they allow us to deal with a collection of values using a single variable.
The physical location of each element in the array is specified by an integer called the index. In C, the first index always starts with 0 (unlike some other languages, like MATLAB, where indices start at 1).
Defining and indexing an array
As an example, let’s say we want to store a list of 5 grades. We can define an array as follows:
int grades[5];
This declaration says we want to set aside space in memory for 5 integer values, and we can refer to that block in memory using the variable name grades. Note that we have only allocated the space in memory, we have not initialized any values of the array. Whatever values happened to be in ...