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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 ).
C99 and C11 added several additional features to C that have not been incorporated into standard C++ as of C++20, such as complex numbers, variable length arrays (complex numbers and variable length arrays are designated as optional extensions in C11), flexible array members, the restrict keyword, array parameter qualifiers, and compound literals.
However, C and C++ will use a linear indexing formula for multi-dimensional arrays that are declared with compile time constant size, e.g. by int A [10][20] or int A [m][n], instead of the traditional int ** A. [8] The C99 standard introduced Variable Length Array types that let define array types with dimensions computed in run time.
In addition to support for vectorized arithmetic and relational operations, these languages also vectorize common mathematical functions such as sine. For example, if x is an array, then y = sin (x) will result in an array y whose elements are sine of the corresponding elements of the array x. Vectorized index operations are also supported.
Flexible array members were officially standardized in C99. [4] In practice, compilers (e.g., GCC , [ 5 ] MSVC [ 6 ] ) provided them well before C99 was standardized. Flexible array members are not officially part of C++ , but language extensions [ 7 ] are widely available.
C99 standardised variable-length arrays (VLAs) within block scope. Such array variables are allocated based on the value of an integer value at runtime upon entry to a block, and are deallocated at the end of the block. [3] As of C11 this feature is no longer required to be implemented by the compiler.
C99 introduced "variable-length arrays" which address this issue. The following example using modern C (C99 or later) shows allocation of a two-dimensional array on the heap and the use of multi-dimensional array indexing for accesses (which can use bounds-checking on many C compilers):
C99 also allows variable length arrays that have the length specified at runtime, [2] although the feature is considered an optional implementation in later versions of the C standard. In such cases, the sizeof operator is evaluated in part at runtime to determine the storage occupied by the array.