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In mathematical terms, an associative array is a function with finite domain. [1] It supports 'lookup', 'remove', and 'insert' operations. The dictionary problem is the classic problem of designing efficient data structures that implement associative arrays. [2] The two major solutions to the dictionary problem are hash tables and search trees.
The arrays are heterogeneous: a single array can have keys of different types. PHP's associative arrays can be used to represent trees, lists, stacks, queues, and other common data structures not built into PHP. An associative array can be declared using the following syntax:
In computing, a hash table is a data structure that implements an associative array, also called a dictionary or simply map; an associative array is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. [2] A hash table uses a hash function to compute an index, also called a hash code, into an array of buckets or slots, from which the desired value ...
Thus a one-dimensional array is a list of data, a two-dimensional array is a rectangle of data, [12] a three-dimensional array a block of data, etc. This should not be confused with the dimension of the set of all matrices with a given domain, that is, the number of elements in the array.
Note how the use of A[i][j] with multi-step indexing as in C, as opposed to a neutral notation like A(i,j) as in Fortran, almost inevitably implies row-major order for syntactic reasons, so to speak, because it can be rewritten as (A[i])[j], and the A[i] row part can even be assigned to an intermediate variable that is then indexed in a separate expression.
A simple dynamic array can be constructed by allocating an array of fixed-size, typically larger than the number of elements immediately required. The elements of the dynamic array are stored contiguously at the start of the underlying array, and the remaining positions towards the end of the underlying array are reserved, or unused.
A dictionary coder, also sometimes known as a substitution coder, is a class of lossless data compression algorithms which operate by searching for matches between the text to be compressed and a set of strings contained in a data structure (called the 'dictionary') maintained by the encoder. When the encoder finds such a match, it substitutes ...
The ordered sequential types are lists (dynamic arrays), tuples, and strings. All sequences are indexed positionally (0 through length - 1) and all but strings can contain any type of object, including multiple types in the same sequence. Both strings and tuples are immutable, making them perfect candidates for dictionary keys (see below).