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Data structures from scratch- Bot-up series #7[Arrays-II]

We have been seeing arrays for a while.

Arrays = Continuous memory location + same size + same data type

Why am I stressing the above points over and over?

There is a reason behind it.

See we store data in order to access them later

This essentially means accessing is the foremost important factor while building data structures

“There is no use of data without accessing it easily”

The way we place the data determines the way we access the data

Let's say we have 20 volumes of sherlock holmes.

If we want to access it easily, almost everyone’s instinct would be to place it side by step where each position resembles volumes

Like first position = first volume,second position = second volume etc

If you know the position, you get the volume

The same happens with the Array we’ve discussed

But one thing to note is that we need to know how many positions we want before creating it

Then operating system allocates space.

This prior announcement make this array a ‘STATIC ARRAY

Let us make it dynamic.

Before that let me explain to you the need for memory and storage through MS-Word

What we do in MS-word is actually a real-world application of memory and storage

We type words before saving any document

While we type → screen actually display the words we typed before even though we didn’t save the document

How? Because it is stored in RAM memory and once we save it goes to the storage

I think you grasp the need for dynamic arrays but let me put it in words

We type a document in MS-word, prior to writing we do not know how many words we are going to type and hence memory allocation is difficult

Therefore we can’t structure it static

This leads us to the concept of ‘Dynamic Array

Dynamic = No need to specify no of words in advance

I will explain the ‘Dynamic arrays’ concept through illustrations in the next article

Happy learning.

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