Regular arrays

An array in C++ can be declared as follows:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
  int array[ 5 ];  // declare an "array" of 5 integers
                   // fill slots 0-4 with values
array[ 0 ] = 1;
array[ 1 ] = 2;
array[ 2 ] = 3;
array[ 3 ] = 4;
array[ 4 ] = 5;
  // print out the contents
  for( int index = 0; index < 5; index++ )
    cout << array[ index ] << endl;
}

The way this looks in memory is something like this:

That is, inside the array variable are five slots or elements. Inside each of the slots is a regular int variable.

The array syntax

So, how do you access one of the int values in the array? To access the individual elements of an array, we use square brackets, as shown in the following line of code:

array[ 0 ] = 10;

The preceding line of code would change the element at slot 0 of the array to a 10:

In general, to get to a particular slot of an array, you will write the following:

array[ slotNumber ] = value to put...