Arrays

You can use arrays in Spice for any primitive or custom struct data type.

Usage¶

To initialize an array e.g. of type string, you can write:

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string[3] myStringArray = [ "First item", "Second Item", "Third item" ];

The 3 in the brackets is the size of the array. The initial values can be provided in curly braces after the assign operator and must be of the same data type.
You can only initialize an array with the number of items equal the arrays size or no items.

To access an array item, you can use the index. The indexes are >= 0 per definition:

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string item3Value = myStringArray[3];

More complex expressions for initial array values and item indexing are possible. Here's an example:

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// Initialize array
dyn condition = 1 != 2;
bool[3] myBoolArray = [ condition ? true : false, false, true ];

// Access item 0
int i = 2;
bool itemValue = myBoolArray[i -= 2];

printf("Value: %u", itemValue);

Arrays as parameters¶

Like in C, an array parameter decays to a pointer to the callers array. No copy is made when calling the function, so assigning to an item of the parameter modifies the array of the caller:

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p setFirst(int[3] values) {
    values[0] = 42; // Modifies the array of the caller
}

f<int> main() {
    int[3] numbers = [ 1, 2, 3 ];
    setFirst(numbers);
    printf("First item: %d", numbers[0]); // Prints 42
}

If you want the callee to work on its own copy, pass a copy explicitly. To hand over an array of arbitrary size, use an unsized array parameter (e.g. int[]) instead, which is a plain pointer without a known item count.