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size_t is an unsigned integer type used to represent the size of any object (including arrays) in the particular implementation. The operator sizeof yields a value of the type size_t . The maximum size of size_t is provided via SIZE_MAX , a macro constant which is defined in the < stdint.h > header ( cstdint header in C++).
For example, even though most implementations of C and C++ on 32-bit systems define type int to be four octets, this size may change when code is ported to a different system, breaking the code. The exception to this is the data type char , which always has the size 1 in any standards-compliant C implementation.
Therefore, although function calls in C use pass-by-value semantics, arrays are in effect passed by reference. The total size of an array x can be determined by applying sizeof to an expression of array type. The size of an element can be determined by applying the operator sizeof to any dereferenced element of an array A, as in n = sizeof A[0].
Some array data structures do not reallocate storage, but do store a count of the number of elements of the array in use, called the count or size. This effectively makes the array a dynamic array with a fixed maximum size or capacity; Pascal strings are examples of this.
Recalling the array example, one could also create a fixed-size array through dynamic allocation: int (* a)[100] = malloc (sizeof * a);
For example, in the Pascal programming language, the declaration type MyTable = array [1.. 4, 1.. 2] of integer, defines a new array data type called MyTable. The declaration var A: MyTable then defines a variable A of that type, which is an aggregate of eight elements, each being an integer variable identified by two indices.
In computer programming, a variable-length array (VLA), also called variable-sized or runtime-sized, is an array data structure whose length is determined at runtime, instead of at compile time. [1] In the language C , the VLA is said to have a variably modified data type that depends on a value (see Dependent type ).
C struct data types may end with a flexible array member [1] with no specified size: struct vectord { short len ; // there must be at least one other data member double arr []; // the flexible array member must be last // The compiler may reserve extra padding space here, like it can between struct members };