Array Documentation

The package "Array" provides structures and methods for constructing and dealing with arrays. In principle an array can be viewed as an instance of an ordinary C-array, like type item[10][5][3]. However, this is a static instantiation of an array.
The arrays in package "Array" are more flexible in that it is possible to dynamically resize or change the number of dimensions.
Furthermore, parameter passing by value and assignment works properly (i.e., the value is passed or assigned and not a pointer to the value) and the subscript operator [ ] may perform a range check at run-time.

Types of Arrays
Array Operations

Types of Arrays

There are several classes for different types of arrays in package "Array":

• Arrays for any number of dimensions:
  These Arrays can have any number of dimensions with arbitrary sizes.
  Therefore, class ArrayBase offers the basic structures and methods and class Array< T > can be used to really create Arrays and deal with them. This is the default Array type of the Shark library.
• 3-dimensional Arrays:
  Class ArrayTable< T > offers 3-dimensional arrays, that are sometimes more efficient to speed up the work compared with using the "normal" Array type.
• References to Arrays:
  Sometimes it is more efficient to work with references to Arrays to avoid copies of the same Array, wasting memory. References to Arrays are implemented in class Array< T >.

Array Operations

Please notice, that the lists of methods for each operation type are not complete. In many classes of the library "Array" you can find further methods, that are so special, that they couldn't be associated to one of the operation types listed here. This list here will give you a survey only.

• Creating Arrays
  Methods for creating Arrays of different types with or without content.
• Information Retrieval
  Get some information about the used Arrays, such as the number of elements or the size of the different dimensions.
• Resizing Arrays
  Dynamically change the size of Arrays.
• Extracting Array elements:
  Extract one or several elements stored in an Array.
• Copying
  Copy Arrays or parts of them.
• Assigning values to an Array
  
• Adding content to an Array
  
• Removing content from an Array
  
• Input/Output of Arrays
  Read in an Array from an input stream or write an Array's content to an output stream.
• Comparing Arrays
  The contents of two Arrays is compared.
• Mathematic Functions
  Many mathematic functions, such as logical or arithmetic functions, matrix functions, etc.