string is not a built-in type.

Last lesson we worked a little bit with accessing characters within an object of type string by index. This gave us some practice with indexed collections of objects, but the type string, remember, is not a basic built-in type in C++. It is a type that is defined in the string library, as we will eventually learn to define new types in our programs.

So, to learn about arrays in C++, we will have to return to the basic built-in types and understand the concepts that are "beneath the hood" in the string type.

Amount of storage for arrays

All the basic types in C++ are fixed size objects - a char is 8 bits, an int is 32 bits, etc. Arrays don't fit that mold of a fixed size, at least not on the surface.

With arrays, the amount of storage we'll need depends on:

The number of objects we want to store in the array

Pointers: how to use an array

As described above, arrays have a different storage model, compared to the basic types such as char and int, we need a different way of using arrays.

For example, you create and use an array of 10 ints as follows:

  1. Ask for 10 consecutive int objects in memory.
  2. Have a variable that points to the first of these.
  3. From this pointer variable you access a particular one of the 10 ints by index.

Declaring a pointer variable

A variable is declared as a pointer to a particular type by putting a * in front of the variable name.

For example, to declare a variable p that is a pointer to objects of type int, you'd write:

int *p;

Warning: The syntax of declaring pointer variables is a bit weird

Allocating space for an array: new operator

In any event, having declared p as a pointer to objects of type int, we have to actually allocate some ints in memory for it to point to! Just declaring p leaves it uninitialized - i.e. pointing to nothing, or what's worse, pointing to some random area of memory.

You allocate memory with the new operator using the following sytax:


new type[number]

This expression allocates number consecutive objects of type type in memory, and returns a pointer to the first object.

For example, to allocate 10 ints in memory and set p to point to the first of them, we'd write:


int* p;                 // delcare a pointer p 
p = new int[10];        // p points to a newly allocated array of 10 ints

Accessing the items of an array: index

Consider the following code snippet again:

int* p;                 // delcare a pointer p 
p = new int[10];        // p points to a newly allocated array of 10 ints

At this point, we can access any of these int objects by the indices 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 just as we did for the characters within a string. For example:

In summary:

The following picture depicts what's going on when we create an array of 4 ints and assign a value to one of the ints in the array.

DECLARE
VARIABLES
Notes on scope:

The pointer is a variable with name and scope like we're used to. That is, the pointer p is a local variable of main, and is part of that function call record on the stack.

ALLOCATE
SPACE
Notes on scope:

However, the array that pointer points to is in a different area of the program's memory called, the heap.

The array itself is not part of any function call record on the stack. That's what this picture is showing you.

ASSIGN
A VALUE

A Simple Problem

Let's look at a simple problem that we can solve using arrays:

Write a program that works as follows:
  1. Reads in a number n from the user
  2. Reads in n doubles from the user
  3. Then, simply prints them out in reverse order.

We already saw from our exercises with accessing characters within a string that indexed collections of objects would allow us to print objects in reverse order.


int main()
{
  // Get number of doubles from user
  int n;
  cout << "How many doubles? ";
  cin >> n;

  // Construct array
  double *A;
  A = new double[n];

  // Read numbers
  cout << "Enter " << n << " doubles: ";
  for(int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    cin >> A[i];

  // Write in reverse order
  cout << "In reverse your numbers are: ";
  for(int j = n - 1; j >= 0; j--)
    cout << A[j] << " ";
  cout << endl;

  return 0;
}
Even an example as simple as this deserves a fair bit of commentary the first time around. In class we'll go over it in painful detail, including pictures.

The variable is just a pointer! Not the array itself!

Remember:

The variable that you're manipulating by name in your program is

just a pointer, not the actual collection of object.

If you keep this in mind, some things that might otherwise trip you up make perfect sense. For example:

Well, they simply point to the same thing! A picture should make this clear.

What's hopefully clear here is that by creating a new pointer q and setting q = p, we did not create a new array populated with the same integer values. We just created a new pointer and set it to point to the same old array.

Quick check

Give the output of the following code:

int* pa = new int[3];
int* pb = new int[3];
pa[0] = 1;  pa[1] = 2;  pa[2] = 3;
pb[0] = 6; pb[1] = 7; pb[2] = 8;

int* q;
q = pb;
q[1]++;
cout << pa[1] << " " << pb[1] << " " << q[1] << endl;

q = pa;
q[1]++;
cout << pa[1] << " " << pb[1] << " " << q[1] << endl;
Answer (drag your mouse):
2 8 8
3 8 3

Objects allocated with new have no scope and live until you kill them

One of the funky things about objects allocated with new is that they have no scope.

So, for example, if you wrote a function that called new to allocate some space, the objects in memory created by new would not be destroyed when the function returned, even though the pointer we had goes out of scope.

Take this example:

Before the function call
During the function call
After the function call

Destroying an array: delete []

You can see that after the function call, our array is still there - although it's utterly useless, since we no longer have a pointer with which to access the array. Instead of being destroyed automatically by scoping rules, objects allocated with new either stick around until the end of the program, or are explicitly destroyed with the delete operator.

For example:


char* p;
p = new char[30]; 	// creates 30 consecutive char's in memory
delete [] p;        // destroys the objects created by new
We'll worry more about delete later.

A note on types

We now have a new type: "pointer to X", where X is a type. So, for example, with the declaration

bool* B = new bool[10];
The type of B is bool*, and the type of B[0] is bool.

If we have the declaration


string* A = new string[20];
The type of A is string*, and the type of A[0] is string.

Each element of an array is an lvalue.

It's also important to note that, as we saw with strings, a subscripted array expression like A[5] is an lvalue, i.e. it is allowed on the left-hand side of an assignment. This is tremendously important.

This means that A[5] is not a copy of the index-5 element of the array, it is the actual index-5 element. You can modify it. For example:

Quick check

Consider the following code:

string* A = new string[20];
A[5] = "hello";
Give the type of each expression below (drag your mouse to check answers):
A string*
A[5] string
A[5][0] char

Problems

  1. Write a program to compute dot-products of vectors. If v = [a1,a2,...,am] and w = [b1,b2,...,bm] are two vectors of dimension m, the dot product of v and w is a1*b1 + a2*b2 + ... + am*bm. Your program will get a dimension m from the user, read in two vectors of length m, and print out their dot product. Here's a sample run:
    Enter dimension: 4
    Enter two vectors: 
    [3,-1,0,2]
    [5,0,9,-7]
    Dot product = 1
    Try it for yourself and then take a look at my solution.

  2. Write a program that reads a list of banned words from a file, stores them in an array, and then simply reads words from the user and returns "banned" or "not banned" until the word "end" is encountered. The file starts with a number, which is the number of banned words, and then the words themselves are listed. The file banned.txt is a good example. Here's my solution.

Do you know...

  1. How do you create an array of 10 doubles?
  2. How do you delete an array?
  3. Consider two pointer variables p and q. When q=p; is executed, will the whole array be copied?
    Answer: No
  4. Consider the following code:
    int* p = new int[n];