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Jorge Stolfi (talk | contribs) →Array structure?: Array data structures are relevant even for programmers which |
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**PS. Indeed, now that the articles have been split, after the lead section one can write just "array" — which was not the case before the split. --[[User:Jorge Stolfi|Jorge Stolfi]] ([[User talk:Jorge Stolfi|talk]]) 16:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
**If datatypes are language-specific, then surely something requiring such low-level use of memory as this article's topic requires language-level support? --[[User:Cybercobra|Cybercobra]] ([[User talk:Cybercobra|talk]]) 01:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
***Many languages that provide array types will translate them to "true" arrays as defined in this article, so this article is relevant to all of them (if only to understand what A[-1]=0 does, why the cache is/isn't working, how to call a FORTRAN routine from Pascal, etc.). The "systems programming languages" will let you do poiner arithmetic, so you don't even have to use the language's array types to work with array structures. (C/C++ have array types, but many C/C++ programs out there create and manipulate d-dimensional arrays, with multilinear addressing, without using a single square bracket. And assembly languages are often use arrays, even though have no data types at all.)<br/> In languages that provide "true" arrays but only of rank 1, you can matrices and more by computing part of the indexing formula explicitly, e.g A[i*c + j*d] to get A[i,j]. (I can't recall any notable language in this class — not surprising, since multiple indices are very easy to compile.)<br/> Even those few languages that actually prevent the programmer from using "true" arrays (such as Awk, whose "arrays" are all hashtables; or some dialects of Lisp, where all you have are S-expressions) still use "true" arrays internally. Obviously their interpreters/compilers must be written in some other language (usually C, C++, or assembly language), at least in part.<br/>So, "language independent" mans that the topic of this article is relevant for all programmers, irrespective of which languages they can/must use, whether those languages have array types, and what those types actually mean. All the best, --[[User:Jorge Stolfi|Jorge Stolfi]] ([[User talk:Jorge Stolfi|talk]]) 02:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
*The continuous rename or move actions and requests show that the terminology used here is not clear and is non-standard. Please provide reliable references for all this. [[User:Kbrose|Kbrose]] ([[User talk:Kbrose|talk]]) 16:32, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
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