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Pascal - Arrays

Pascal arrays allow storing a collection of elements of the same type in contiguous memory locations. An array variable is declared along with the array type, which specifies the index type and element type. Individual elements can then be accessed using the array variable name and a subscript index. Arrays can be initialized by assigning values to elements using a for loop over the valid indexes.

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75 views

Pascal - Arrays

Pascal arrays allow storing a collection of elements of the same type in contiguous memory locations. An array variable is declared along with the array type, which specifies the index type and element type. Individual elements can then be accessed using the array variable name and a subscript index. Arrays can be initialized by assigning values to elements using a for loop over the valid indexes.

Uploaded by

Andrew
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Pascal programming language provides a data structure called the array, which can

store a fixed-size sequential collection of elements of the same type. An array is


used to store a collection of data, but it is often more useful to think of an
array as a collection of variables of the same type.

Instead of declaring individual variables, such as number1, number2, ..., and


number100, you declare one array variable such as numbers and use numbers[1],
numbers[2], and ..., numbers[100] to represent individual variables. A specific
element in an array is accessed by an index.

All arrays consist of contiguous memory locations. The lowest address corresponds
to the first element and the highest address to the last element.

Please note that if you want a C style array starting from index 0, you just need
to start the index from 0, instead of 1.

Arrays in Pascal
Declaring Arrays
To declare an array in Pascal, a programmer may either declare the type and then
create variables of that array or directly declare the array variable.

The general form of type declaration of one-dimensional array is −

type
array-identifier = array[index-type] of element-type;
Where,

array-identifier − indicates the name of the array type.

index-type − specifies the subscript of the array; it can be any scalar data type
except real

element-type − specifies the types of values that are going to be stored

For example,

type
vector = array [ 1..25] of real;
var
velocity: vector;
Now, velocity is a variable array of vector type, which is sufficient to hold up to
25 real numbers.

To start the array from 0 index, the declaration would be −

type
vector = array [ 0..24] of real;
var
velocity: vector;
Types of Array Subscript
In Pascal, an array subscript could be of any scalar type like, integer, Boolean,
enumerated or subrange, except real. Array subscripts could have negative values
too.

For example,

type
temperature = array [-10 .. 50] of real;
var
day_temp, night_temp: temperature;
Let us take up another example where the subscript is of character type −

type
ch_array = array[char] of 1..26;
var
alphabet: ch_array;
Subscript could be of enumerated type −

type
color = ( red, black, blue, silver, beige);
car_color = array of [color] of boolean;
var
car_body: car_color;
Initializing Arrays
In Pascal, arrays are initialized through assignment, either by specifying a
particular subscript or using a for-do loop.

For example −

type
ch_array = array[char] of 1..26;
var
alphabet: ch_array;
c: char;

begin
...
for c:= 'A' to 'Z' do
alphabet[c] := ord[m];
(* the ord() function returns the ordinal values *)
Accessing Array Elements
An element is accessed by indexing the array name. This is done by placing the
index of the element within square brackets after the name of the array. For
example −

a: integer;
a: = alphabet['A'];
The above statement will take the first element from the array named alphabet and
assign the value to the variable a.

Following is an example, which will use all the above-mentioned three concepts viz.
declaration, assignment and accessing arrays −

Live Demo
program exArrays;
var
n: array [1..10] of integer; (* n is an array of 10 integers *)
i, j: integer;

begin
(* initialize elements of array n to 0 *)
for i := 1 to 10 do
n[ i ] := i + 100; (* set element at location i to i + 100 *)
(* output each array element's value *)

for j:= 1 to 10 do
writeln('Element[', j, '] = ', n[j] );
end.
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Element[1] = 101
Element[2] = 102
Element[3] = 103
Element[4] = 104
Element[5] = 105
Element[6] = 106
Element[7] = 107
Element[8] = 108
Element[9] = 109
Element[10] = 110
Pascal Arrays in Detail
Arrays are important to Pascal and should need lots of more details. There are
following few important concepts related to array which should be clear to a Pascal
programmer −

Sr.No Concept & Description


1 Multi-dimensional arrays
Pascal supports multidimensional arrays. The simplest form of the multidimensional
array is the two-dimensional array.

2 Dynamic array
In this type of arrays, the initial length is zero. The actual length of the array
must be set with the standard SetLength function.

3 Packed array
These arrays are bit-packed, i.e., each character or truth values are stored in
consecutive bytes instead of using one storage unit, usually a word (4 bytes or
more).

4 Passing arrays to subprograms


You can pass to a subprogram a pointer to an array by specifying the array's name
without an index.

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