Pascal programming language provides a data structure called the array, which can store a fixed-size sequential collection of elements of the same type. An array is used to store a collection of data, but it is often more useful to think of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.

Instead of declaring individual variables, such as number1, number2, ..., and number100, you declare one array variable such as numbers and use numbers[1], numbers[2], and ..., numbers[100] to represent individual variables. A specific element in an array is accessed by an index.

All arrays consist of contiguous memory locations. The lowest address corresponds to the first element and the highest address to the last element.

Please note that if you want a C style array starting from index 0, you just need to start the index from 0, instead of 1.

Declaring Arrays

Jul 29, 2013  When I was using Pascal in earnest 20 years ago, it was a case of remembering CTV (Cats Television - or any other way that floated your boat). Consts first, then Types, then Variables. It followed that you couldn't declare a Type and then make a Const with it. 1C - Constants (author: Tao Yue, state: unchanged). Note that in Pascal, characters are enclosed in single quotes, or apostrophes (')! This contrasts with newer languages which often use or allow double quotes or Heredoc notation. Standard Pascal does not use or allow double quotes to mark characters or strings. Const a: real = 12.

To declare an array in Pascal, a programmer may either declare the type and then create variables of that array or directly declare the array variable.

The general form of type declaration of one-dimensional array is −

Where,

• array-identifier − indicates the name of the array type.

• index-type − specifies the subscript of the array; it can be any scalar data type except real

• element-type − specifies the types of values that are going to be stored

For example,

Now, velocity is a variable array of vector type, which is sufficient to hold up to 25 real numbers.

To start the array from 0 index, the declaration would be −

Types of Array Subscript

In Pascal, an array subscript could be of any scalar type like, integer, Boolean, enumerated or subrange, except real. Array subscripts could have negative values too.

For example,

Let us take up another example where the subscript is of character type −

Subscript could be of enumerated type −

Initializing Arrays

In Pascal, arrays are initialized through assignment, either by specifying a particular subscript or using a for-do loop.

For example −

Accessing Array Elements

An element is accessed by indexing the array name. This is done by placing the index of the element within square brackets after the name of the array. For example −

The above statement will take the first element from the array named alphabet and assign the value to the variable a.

Following is an example, which will use all the above-mentioned three concepts viz. declaration, assignment and accessing arrays −

Live Demo

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Pascal Arrays in Detail

Arrays are important to Pascal and should need lots of more details. There are following few important concepts related to array which should be clear to a Pascal programmer −

Sr.No	Concept & Description
1	Multi-dimensional arrays Pascal supports multidimensional arrays. The simplest form of the multidimensional array is the two-dimensional array.
2	Dynamic array In this type of arrays, the initial length is zero. The actual length of the array must be set with the standard SetLength function.
3	Packed array These arrays are bit-packed, i.e., each character or truth values are stored in consecutive bytes instead of using one storage unit, usually a word (4 bytes or more).
4	Passing arrays to subprograms You can pass to a subprogram a pointer to an array by specifying the array's name without an index.