Examples Using Arrays (Arrays Part three)

Now that we have gotten a grip over the basics of arrays ( part one and part two ), we will discuss some basic code examples involving arrays.

Strings:

Strings can be considered as arrays of characters;

–     All strings end with null ('\0')

–     Examples

•        char string1[] = "hello";

–       Null character implicitly added

–       string1 has 6 elements

•        char string1[] = { 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l',    'o', '\0’ };

–     Subscripting is the same

string1[ 0 ] is 'h'

string1[ 2 ] is 'l'

•      Input from keyboard

  char string2[ 10 ];

  cin >> string2;

–     Puts user input in string

•        Stops at first whitespace character

•        Adds null character

–     If too much text is entered then the data is written beyond array

•      Printing strings

–     cout << string2 << endl;

•        Does not work for other array types

–     Characters printed until null found

 This is shown in the examples below:

Static Arrays:

Recall static storage

–If static, local variables save values between function calls

–Visible only in function body

–Can declare local arrays to be static

•Initialized to zero

static int array[3];

If not static

–Created (and destroyed) in every function call

             

Sorting data using Arrays:

 Before getting into this example we should first know what Sorting data is, it is:

–     An important computing application

–     Virtually every organization must sort some data

•        Massive amounts must be sorted

•      Bubble sort

–     Several passes through the array

–     Successive pairs of elements are compared

•        If increasing order (or identical), no change

•        If decreasing order, elements exchanged

–     Repeat these steps for every element

• Example:

–        Go left to right, and exchange elements as necessary

•          One pass for each element

–        Original:   3  4  2  7  6

–        Pass 1:      3  2  4  6  7   (elements exchanged)

–        Pass 2:      2  3  4  6  7

–        Pass 3:      2  3  4  6  7   (no changes needed)

–        Pass 4:      2  3  4  6  7

–        Small elements "bubble" to the top (like 2 in this example)

•          Swapping variables

int x = 3, y = 4;

y = x;

x = y;

•          What happened?

–        Both x and y are 3!

–        Need a temporary variable

•          Solution

int x = 3, y = 4, temp = 0;

temp = x;  // temp gets 3

x = y;     // x gets 4

y = temp;  // y gets 3

              

              
             

Computing Mean, Mode and Median using Arrays:

First lets just look at what mean , median and mode actually are:

•Mean

–Average (sum/number of elements)

•Median

–Number in middle of sorted list

–1, 2, 3, 4, 5  (3 is median)

–If even number of elements, take average of middle two

•Mode

–Number that occurs most often

–1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5 (1 is mode)

Now lets look at how we'll compute these.