Understanding Arrays & Vectors: What They Do & Why They Matter

[ineedhelpnow]

whats an array for?...whats a vector for? what do they do? what purpose do they serve?

 

[alyafey22]

whats an array for?...whats a vector for? who do they do? what purpose do they serve?

Arrays are a collection of data. It holds a sequence of information indexed using natural numbers. Vectors are like those in mathematics. They have specialized operations like adding , scalar-multiplication and so on.

Usually we use arrays and vectors to store data that share a certain property. For example , the students in a class , a finite subset of even numbers , list of books on a library. Most of the time , the size of an array is fixed once declared. Arrays , are mostly used in graphics and gaming.

 

[Nono713]

Arrays are a collection of data. It holds a sequence of information indexed using natural numbers. Vectors are like those in mathematics. They have specialized operations like adding , scalar-multiplication and so on.

Usually we use arrays and vectors to store data that share a certain property. For example , the students in a class , a finite subset of even numbers , list of books on a library. Most of the time , the size of an array is fixed once declared. Arrays , are mostly used in graphics and gaming.

I would say arrays have more uses than outside graphics and gaming. Most nontrivial programs feature arrays in some way. Arrays and key-value stores (dictionaries/maps) are the most basic data structures.

Also, I think NHN is talking about std::vector, not an actual 3D vector (std::vector is just a type-safe dynamic array). I seriously hate that it's called a "vector" and not an array or list, it's really confusing (even more confusingly, there is an std::list, but it's implemented as a linked list, and hence not usually worth using).

 

[ineedhelpnow]

A vector is an ordered list of items of a given data type.
this is what i have as a definition but i still don't really get it.

 

[ineedhelpnow]

i remember he said in class that we don't ACTUALLY use arrays when we code or something like that. and that got me very confused. he didn't explain it. he just mentioned something about not using them when coding and then he cut off.