Arrays and Records

This lesson covers arrays and records — two fundamental static data structures used extensively in A-Level Computer Science. Arrays store collections of elements of the same type, while records group related data of different types.

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Arrays

An array is a static data structure that stores a fixed number of elements of the same data type in contiguous memory locations. Each element is accessed using an index (a numerical position).

Key Properties

Property	Description
Fixed size	The size is set when the array is created and cannot change.
Homogeneous	All elements must be of the same data type.
Contiguous memory	Elements are stored next to each other in memory.
Indexed access	Any element can be accessed directly using its index in O(1) time.
Zero-based indexing	In most languages, the first element is at index 0.

Pseudocode

DECLARE names: ARRAY[0..4] OF STRING
names[0] = "Alice"
names[1] = "Bob"
names[2] = "Charlie"

// Traverse the array
FOR i = 0 TO 4
    OUTPUT names[i]
NEXT i

Python