Examples of Arrays Between Programming Languages

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8 min readJun 15, 2022

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Have you ever heard the word “arrays” and wondered what it is or how it works in a programming language? Well, then you are just in a suitable place for it. Let’s look at arrays and how different they are compared to the top programming languages. Also, you will learn the importance of the Array to the user and how it applies to the top programming languages. Therefore, what benefit or downside will it bring and how will they use it effetely.

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In programming, most cases require storing a large amount of data of a similar type. To hold such data, we have to define many variables. It would be challenging to remember all the variable names when writing programs. Instead, it’s better to define an array and store all its elements. Recently, many programming languages ​​have used arrays in their way to keep memories.

Arrays

An array is a collection of similar data elements stored at contiguous memory locations. In computer science, array programming refers to solutions that allow the application of operations to an entire set of values at once. The numeric Index (a non-negative value) corresponding to that element’s location must be used to access an array element. The first index value in the Array is zero, so the Index with the value of four is used to access the fifth array element. An array element that is also an array is called a sub-array. Arrays can have one or two dimensions. There are three programming languages that I will talk about them during this research: Python, C/C++, and Java. Each has unique advances and code to define Array and store all the elements.

History

Early digital computers used machine language programming to configure and access matrix structures for data tables, vector and matrix calculations, and many other purposes. John von Neumann wrote the first array-sorting program (combined sort) in 1945 when building the first stored-program computer. In the 1960s, some mainframes were designed, such as the Burroughs B5000 and its successors. Array indexing was done originally by self-modifying code and, later, index registers and indirection using memory segmentation to perform index limit checking in hardware.

Benefit and downside

Arrays can bring many benefits to the user, like it provides easy access to all elements at once, and the order of access to any element does not matter. When creating an array, you don’t have to worry about memory allocation because all aspects are allocated in contiguous memory locations in the Array. There is no chance of extra memory being allocated if an array exists. This avoids the problem of overflow or insufficient memory. Data structures such as linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, and graphs can be obtained using arrays.

Despite all the benefits we can get from arrays, some downsides come. We can see that an array is fixed in size, which means you cannot add/remove items after it is created. It also cannot change its size dynamically. Unlike lists in Python, you cannot store values ​​of different data types in a single array. Removing an element from an array involves copying all previous elements to fill the space left by the deleted element. Removing elements from an array is very expensive for this reason. Another thing is that they do not support random access, so If you want to get a particular record from an array, you need to know its exact Index.

Application and User

Arrays are one of the programs that are used by many of the top programming languages like Python, Java, or C/C++. Therefore, the users that use arrays are primarily programmers, computer designers,s and software developers. It’s also a good program for the beginner since it can be used as a fundamental building block in many data structures. Many applications of Array can be seen in top programming languages. Like arrays are used to implement vectors and lists, an essential part of C++ STL, arrays are used to implement stacks and queues. Also, arrays are used to hold multiple variables with the same name. Data structures such as heap, map, and set use binary search trees and balanced binary trees whose services can be implemented by arrays. In real life, physical devices such as computer screens, television, and phased-array radar apply array-structured. We can rotate or animate graphics using the APL language for array and vector transformations.

Python

First, an array in Python is a collection of elements stored in contiguous memory locations. The idea is to keep multiple items of the same type together. This makes it easier to calculate the position of each element by simply adding an offset to a base value, i.e., the memory location of the first element in the Array (usually indicated by the array name). In Python, the Array is dynamic, and you don’t have to worry about what kind of objects it contains or how long the Array you start with is. So far, there are several ways in Python to print the entire Array with all elements but to print a specific range of array elements, and we use the Slice operation.

Slice operation is performed on the Array using a colon (:). To print elements from the beginning to a range, use [: Index], to print elements from end-use [: -Index], to print elements from specific Index till the end use [Index:], to print elements within a range, use [Start Index: End Index] and to print the whole list with the help of slicing operation, use [:]. Further, to print the entire Array in reverse order, use [: -1]. By using this method, they can be declared once and reused multiple times. It represents multiple values by making use of a single variable. This helps in the improvement of the reusability of code and also improves the readability of the code. If no array is used in this situation, we will need to store multiple values in multiple variables.

Example code for Array in Python:

import array as arr
numbers_list = [2, 5, 62, 5, 42, 52, 48, 5]
numbers_array = arr.array('i', numbers_list)
print(numbers_array[2:5]) # 3rd to 5th
print(numbers_array[:-5]) # beginning to 4th
print(numbers_array[5:]) # 6th to end
print(numbers_array[:]) # beginning to end

Output

array('i', [62, 5, 42])
array('i', [2, 5, 62])
array('i', [52, 48, 5])
array('i', [2, 5, 62, 5, 42, 52, 48, 5])

JavaScript

Second, an array in Java is a dynamically created object that serves as a container to hold a constant number of values ​​of the same type. Declaring an array allocates memory space for values ​​of a particular type. At creation, the Array’s length must be specified and remain constant. The numeric Index (a non-negative value) corresponding to that element’s location must be used to access an array element. The first index value in the Array is zero, so the Index with the value of four is used to access the fifth array element.

An array element that is also an array is called a sub-array. Arrays can have one or two dimensions. We can offer many bits of help while using arrays in Java. We can access any element randomly using the index number provided by arrays. We can store multiple elements at once. This is fast because primitive type to an object of wrapper classes conversion won’t happen in Array. There are also some disadvantages like arrays are strongly typed, so we can’t add or remove methods, and when we want to remove an element from the Array, we have to iterate through the whole Array, which will slow down performance.

Example code for arrays in Java:

Inputclass Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// create an array
int[] age = {12, 4, 5};
// loop through the array
// using for loop
System.out.println("Using for Loop:");
for(int i = 0; i < age.length; i++) {
System.out.println(age[i]);}}}
OutputUsing for Loop:
12
4
5

C/C++

Finally, an array in C/C++ or any other programming language is a collection of similar data items stored in contiguous memory locations. The items can be accessed randomly using the indices of an array. They can be used to store a collection of primitive data types like int, float, double, char, etc., of a particular type. Also, an array in C/C++ can store derived data types, such as structures, pointers, etc. Using an array in C/C++ is to use normal variables (v1, v2, v3…) when we have a small number of objects, but if we want to store a large number of instances, it becomes difficult to manage them with variables. Ordinary. The idea of ​​an array is to represent multiple instances in a variable. Array elements in C/C++ are accessed using an integer index.

The array index starts with 0 and goes up to the array size minus 1, and the array name is also a pointer to the first array element. An array in C/C++ has some advantages: random access to elements by array index uses fewer lines of code because it creates a single array of multiple elements and makes it easier to traverse the Array with a single loop. Although there are also some disadvantages of allowing a fixed number of elements to be entered, which is decided at declaration time because an array in C/C++ is not dynamic, and inserting or deleting d items can be expensive because items must be managed according to the new memory allocation.

Example code for arrays in C/C++:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
int numbers[5] = {7, 5, 6, 12, 35};
cout << "The numbers are: ";
// Printing array elements
// using range based for loop
for (const int &n : numbers) {
cout << n << " ";
}cout << "\nThe numbers are: ";
// Printing array elements
// using traditional for loop
for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
cout << numbers[i] << " ";
}
return 0;
}

Output

The numbers are: 7  5  6  12  35
The numbers are: 7 5 6 12 35

Conclusion

To sum up, arrays are common to the top programming languages like Python, Java, and C/C++. Even though they are not precisely similar to each other in some way, they also have different potential. It’s a good program used by many developers, programmers, and designers. Arrays have many applications in data structure and real life. Therefore, it brought many benefits like arrays have brought to the programming by helping program runs faster and can be utilized anywhere. Even though it also has some downsides. They store data of similar data types together and can be used anywhere in the code. Hence, they are more efficient regarding memory allocations and are most advisable to be used in all modern languages.

Nevertheless, there are not many that can handle the Array, which contains a large number of elements. Therefore, I will only focus on the top programming languages ​​that can take various things. They are Python, Java, and C/C+.

Additionally, they can be used to perform various CPU programming techniques. They also help to maximize the code. We can store many values ​​in a single array by writing a small piece of code.

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