adding 2st animation

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Jidong Xiao
2023-09-18 22:14:56 -04:00
parent 425988d4e2
commit 408cffb997

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@@ -78,7 +78,57 @@ similar to the examples covered in the pointers lecture except that there is no
other than the pointer variable. other than the pointer variable.
- Dynamic allocation of primitives like ints and doubles is not very interesting or significant. Whats more important is dynamic allocation of arrays and class objects. - Dynamic allocation of primitives like ints and doubles is not very interesting or significant. Whats more important is dynamic allocation of arrays and class objects.
- play this [animation](https://jidongxiao.github.io/CSCI1200-DataStructures/animations/dynamic_memory/example1/index.html). - play this [animation](https://jidongxiao.github.io/CSCI1200-DataStructures/animations/dynamic_memory/example1/index.html) to see what exactly the above code snippet does.
## 6.3 Dynamic Allocation of Arrays
- How do we allocate an array on the stack? What is the code? What memory diagram is produced by the code?
- Declaring the size of an array at compile time doesnt offer much flexibility. Instead we can dynamically allocate an array based on data. This gets us part-way toward the behavior of the standard library vector class. Heres an example:
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<pre>
int main() {
std::cout << "Enter the size of the array: ";
int n,i;
std::cin >> n;
double *a = new double[n];
for (i=0; i<n; ++i) { a[i] = sqrt(i); }
for (i=0; i<n; ++i) {
if ( double(int(a[i])) == a[i] )
std::cout << i << " is a perfect square " << std::endl;
}
delete [] a;
return 0;
}
</pre>
</td>
<td><img src="array.png" alt="array"</td>
</tr>
</table>
- The expression new double[n] asks the system to dynamically allocate enough consecutive memory to hold n
doubles (usually 8n bytes).
- Whats crucially important is that n is a variable. Therefore, its value and, as a result, the size of the
array are not known until the program is executed and the the memory must be allocated dynamically.
- The address of the start of the allocated memory is assigned to the pointer variable a.
- After this, a is treated as though it is an array. For example: a[i] = sqrt( i );
In fact, the expression a[i] is exactly equivalent to the pointer arithmetic and dereferencing expression *(a+i)
which we have seen several times before.
- After we are done using the array, the line: delete [] a; releases the memory allocated for the entire
array and calls the destructor (well learn about these soon!) for each slot of the array. Deleting a dynamically
allocated array without the [] is an error (but it may not cause a crash or other noticeable problem, depending
on the type stored in the array and the specific compiler implementation).
- Since the program is ending, releasing the memory is not a major concern. However, to demonstrate
that you understand memory allocation & deallocation, you should always delete dynamically allocated
memory in this course, even if the program is terminating.
- In more substantial programs it is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL. If we forget to release memory repeatedly
the program can be said to have a memory leak. Long-running programs with memory leaks will eventually
run out of memory and crash.
- play this [animation](https://jidongxiao.github.io/CSCI1200-DataStructures/animations/dynamic_memory/example2/index.html) to see what exactly the above code snippet does.
## 6.3 Exercises ## 6.3 Exercises