Array Data Structure is the following article of Introduction to Data Structure in Learning Data Structure Series.

Array is a collection of elements of same type, stored in sequential memory locations. The elements of array are referenced by the index or subscript of array. Array is a linear type of data structure because the memory locations are sequentially allocated to store the data.

Example: Suppose there is an array – Data – having capacity to store 10 elements then the elements of array will be referred by the index like Data[2] (read as Data of 2), Data[7] etc.

Name of Array: Data

Index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Value 10 15 35 60 45 9 12 80 33

eg: Data[1] = 15

Index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Value 10 15 2 35 60 45 9 12 80 33

eg: Data[6] = 9

Index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Value 10 15 2 35 60 45 9 12 80 33

There are some types of arrays like one-dimension, two-dimension and multi-dimensional array. Let’s learn it one by one.

One – Dimensional Array Data Structure:

A linear array with single subscript is known as one-dimensional array. Each element in the array is referenced by a single index or subscript. One-dimensional arrays are frequently used in programming.

Name of Array: DATA

Index 1 2 3 4 5 6 Value 27 14 85 99 101 950

Above example is of one-dimensional array because every element in the array is denoted by single memory location.

Example: Element 99 here is denoted as DATA[4] and 27 by DATA[1].

DATA[4] = 99

DATA[1] = 27.

Two – Dimensional Array Data Structure:

An array with two subscripts is known as two-dimensional array. A two dimensional array A is a collection of m*n data elements such that each element is specified by a pair of subscript. The two-dimensional arrays are called as matrices in mathematics and table in business applications.

Example:

In above array, there are two index values: Row index value and column index value. Row is horizontal element and column is vertical element.Fig: Two-dimensional 3*3 array A.

In this ,

A[1,1] means element of array A of 1st row and 1st column

A[3,2] means element of array A of 3rd row and 2nd column

In above example A[3,2] =2

A[2,2] = 25 and

A[1,3] = 7

Multi – Dimensional Array Data Structure:

An array having more than two subscripts is known as multi-dimensional array. An n- dimensional array B is a collection of m­­ 1 . m 2 . m 3 ­…­­­. m­ n ­data elements in which each element is specified by a list of n integers such as K 1, K 2 , . , . , . , K n called subscripts, with the property that

1 ≤ K 1 ≤ m 1 , 1 ≤ K 2 ≤ m 2 , . . . , 1 ≤ K n ≤ m n

The elements of B with subscript K 1, K 2 , . , . , . , K n will be denoted by B[K 1, K 2, . , . , . , K n ]

In this article we learnt basics about array data structure and their types. This article follows with the operations like insert & delete elements, sorting, searching and other operations we can perform on arrays. We will learn Insert and Delete Operation on Array in the following article of Learning Data Structure Series.