Comparison Of Programming Languages (array)

This comparison of programming languages (array) compares the features of array data structures or matrix processing for various computer programming languages.

Syntax

Array dimensions

The following list contains syntax examples of how to determine the dimensions (index of the first element, the last element or the size in elements).

Note particularly that some languages index from zero while others index from one.

Indexing

The following list contains syntax examples of how to access a single element of an array.

Slicing

The following list contains syntax examples of how a range of element of an array can be accessed.

In the following table:
* – the index of the first element in the slice
* – the index of the last element in the slice
* – one more than the index of last element in the slice
* – the length of the slice (= end - first)
* – the number of array elements in each (default 1)

Array system cross-reference list

Vectorized array operations

Some compiled languages such as Ada and Fortran, and some scripting languages such as IDL, MATLAB, and S-Lang, have native support for vectorized operations on arrays. For example, to perform an element by element sum of two arrays, and to produce a third , it is only necessary to write
c = a + b

In addition to support for vectorized arithmetic and relational operations, these languages also vectorize common mathematical functions such as sine. For example, if is an array, then
y = sin (x)

will result in an array whose elements are sine of the corresponding elements of the array .

Vectorized index operations are also supported. As an example,

even = x(2::2);
odd = x(::2);

is how one would use Fortran to create arrays from the even and odd entries of an array. Another common use of vectorized indices is a filtering operation. Consider a clipping operation of a sine wave where amplitudes larger than 0.5 are to be set to 0.5. Using S-Lang, this can be done by
y = sin(x);
y here(abs(y)>0.5)= 0.5;

Mathematical matrix operations

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References

{{Reflist, refs=
The index may be a negative number, indicating the corresponding number of places before the end of the array.

Slices for multidimensional arrays are also supported and defined similarly.
Slices of the type ''first'':''last'':''step'' are also supported.
More generally, for 1-d arrays Perl and S-Lang allow slices of the form''array'' 'indices''/code>, where ''indices'' can be a range such mentioned in footnote 2 or an explicit list of indices, e.g., ' ,9,3,4/code>', or a mix of both, e.g., A [0:3,7,9,[11:2:-3">:3">[0:3,7,9,[11:2:-3">:3<_a>,7,9,[11:2:-3.html" ;"title=":3">[0:3,7,9,[11:2:-3">:3">[0:3,7,9,[11:2:-3/code>.
{{Mono, ''last'' or {{Mono, ''end'' may be a negative number, indicating to stop at the corresponding number of places before the end of the array.
C# 8.0 proposed feature ({{as of, 2019, 08, 29, lc=y)
{{cite web , title=Ranges - C# 8.0 language proposals , url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/proposals/csharp-8.0/ranges , website=Microsoft Docs , publisher=Microsoft , accessdate=29 August 2019

Size can only be chosen on initialization after which it is fixed.
Allows arrays of arrays which can be used to emulate most—but not all—aspects multi-dimensional arrays
Size can only be chosen on initialization when memory is allocated on the heap, as distinguished from when it is allocated on the stack. This note need not be made for a language that always allocates arrays on the heap.
C99 allows for variable size arrays; however there is almost no compiler available to support this new feature
This list is strictly comparing language features. In every language (even assembler) it is possible to provide improved array handling via add on libraries. This language has improved array handling as part of its standard library
The class Array is fixed-size, but OrderedCollection is dynamic
The indexing base can be 0 or 1 as per the System Variable {{Mono, ⎕IO. This value may apply to the whole "workspace", or be localized to a user-defined function or a single primitive function by use of the Variant operator ({{Mono, ⍠).
At least 2 dimensions (scalar numbers are 1×1 arrays, vectors are 1×n or n×1 arrays).
Allows creating fixed-size arrays in "unsafe" code, allowing enhanced interoperability with other language
Varies by implementation. Newer implementations (FreePascal, Object Pascal (Delphi)) allow heap-based dynamic arrays.
Behaviour can be tuned via compiler switches. As in DMD 1.0 bounds are checked in debug mode and unchecked in release mode for efficiency
Almost all Fortran implementations offer bounds checking options via compiler switches. However by default, bounds checking is usually turned off for efficiency
Many implementations (Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal (Delphi), FreePascal) allow the behaviour to be changed by compiler switches and in-line directives
COBOL provides a way to specify that the usable size of an array is variable, but this can never be greater than the declared maximum size, which is also the allocated size
Most Common Lisp implementations allow checking to be selectively disabled
The index type can be a freely chosen integer type, enumerated type, or character type. For arrays with non-compact index types see: Associative array
The default base index is the lowest value of the index type used
Standard Perl array data types do not support vectorized operations as defined here. However, the Perl Data Language extension adds array objects with this ability.
The standard Python array type, list, does not support vectorized operations as defined here. However, the numpy extension adds array objects with this ability
By specifying a base index, arrays at an arbitrary base can be created. However, by default, Lua's length operator does not consider the base index of the array when calculating the length. This behavior can be changed via metamethods.
FreeBASIC supports both variable array lengths and fixed length arrays. Arrays declared with no index range are created as variable-length arrays, while arrays with a declared range are created as fixed-length arrays
In these languages, one can access or write to an array index greater than or equal to the length of the array, and the array will implicitly grow to that size. This may appear at first as if the bounds are not checked; however, the bounds are checked in order to decide to grow the array, and you do not have unsafe memory access like you do in C.
PHP's "arrays" are associative arrays. You can use integers and strings as the keys (indexes); floats can also be used as the key but are truncated to integers. There is not really any "base index" or "bounds"
Haskell arrays (Data.Array) allow using any type which is an instance of Ix as index type. So a custom type can be defined and used as an index type as long as it instances Ix. Also, tuples of Ix types are also Ix types; this is commonly used to implement multi-dimensional arrays
ALGOL 68 arrays must be subscripted (and sliced) by type {{Mono, INT. However a hash function could be used to convert other types to {{Mono, INT. e.g. {{Mono, name ''hash("string")''
Because C does not bound-check indices, a pointer to the interior of any array can be defined that will symbolically act as a pseudo-array that accommodates negative indices or any integer index origin.
COBOL arrays may be indexed with "INDEX" types, distinct from integer types
While COBOL only has arrays-of-arrays, array elements can be accessed with a multi-dimensional-array-like syntax, where the language automatically matches the indexes to the arrays enclosing the item being referenced
While Golang's Array type is not dynamically sized, the data typ
Slice
is dynamically-sized and is much more common in use than arrays.
The base can be changed when initializing with {{Mono, System.Array.CreateInstance (which returns {{Mono, System.Array), but not when using the language syntax. Arrays with non-zero base indices are not the same type as those with zero base indices and cannot be manipulated using language syntax (the {{Mono, GetValue and {{Mono, SetValue methods must be used instead) or downcast to a specific type ({{Mono, T[] in C#, or {{Mono, T() in VB.NET), preventing breakage of code assuming base indices of zero.
XPath/XQuery has two kinds of arrays. ''Sequences'' {{Mono, (1,2,3) which cannot nest and in the XPath/XQuery 3.1 version ''arrays'' {{Mono, array { 1,2,3 } or {{Mono, ,2,3} which can.

Programming language comparison
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