Declaration of Arrays

DECLARATION OF ARRAYS

We have already seen that every variable must be declared before it is used. The same concept holds true for array variables. An array must be declared before being used. Declaring an array 

means specifying the following:

* Data type—the kind of values it can store, for example, int, char, float, double.

* Name—to identify the array.

* Size—the maximum number of values that the array can hold.

Arrays are declared using the following syntax:

type name[size];

The type can be either int, float, double, char, or any other valid data type. The number within brackets indicates the size of the array, i.e., the maximum number of elements that can be stored in the array. For example, if we write,

int marks[10];

then the statement declares marks to be an array containing 10 elements. In C, the array index starts from zero. The first element will be stored in marks[0], second element in marks[1], and so on. Therefore, the last element, that is the 10th element, will be stored in marks[9]. Note that 

0, 1, 2, 3 written within square brackets are the subscripts. In the memory, the array will be stored as shown in Fig

Fig : Memory representation of an array of 10 elements

 Figure: Declaring arrays of different data types and sizes