Parallel array

[dejavu33]

Hello!

Im learning arrays and am having trouble with parallel arrays. I dont understand exactly what they are. Can anyone give me an explanation of what they are or maybe how they can be declared or a small example...anyth ing to help me understand parallel arrays?

Thank you.

[Killer42]

Im learning arrays and am having trouble with parallel arrays. I dont understand exactly what they are. Can anyone give me an explanation of what they are or maybe how they can be declared or a small example...anyth ing to help me understand parallel arrays?

I think I've heard the expression "parallel arrays" once or twice. My guess would be that this refers to the common practice of defining multiple arrays with the same number of occurrences, to hold related information. For instance, you might have one array to hold names, another to hold ages, and so on.

I could be wrong, of course. Try some searches on TheScripts and on the web in general (you can do both from the Search box at the top-right of this page).

[SammyB]

Hello!

Im learning arrays and am having trouble with parallel arrays. I dont understand exactly what they are. Can anyone give me an explanation of what they are or maybe how they can be declared or a small example...anyth ing to help me understand parallel arrays?

Thank you.

Killer's exactly right. For example, you might have an array of people's names and a parallel array of their ages. So, if you search thru the name array and find Sam at index 2, then you you can use the same index into the age array to find Sam's age:

		Dim Names() As String = {"Killer", "Sam", "Deja", "Sue"}
		Dim Ages() As Integer = {23, 61, 17, 12}
		Dim i As Integer = 0
		Do While Names(i) <> "Sam"
			i = i + 1
		Loop
		MsgBox("Sam is " & Ages(i))

However, since parallel arrays indicate that something belongs together, now we usually create an object to hold all of the parallel data. Doing the example object-oriented, we would not use parallel arrays but instead create a Person object with two properties, name and age, and create List of Persons. Our Person class would look like:

Public Class Person
	Public Name As String
	Public Age As Integer
	Public Sub New(ByVal sName As String, ByVal iAge As Integer)
		Name = sName
		Age = iAge
	End Sub
End Class

And our object-oriented code would look like

		Dim Persons As List(Of Person)
		Persons = New List(Of Person)
		Persons.Add(New Person("Killer", 23))
		Persons.Add(New Person("Sam", 61))
		Persons.Add(New Person("Deja", 17))
		Persons.Add(New Person("Sue", 12))
		Dim p As Person
		For Each p In Persons
			If p.Name = "Sam" Then _
				MsgBox("Sam is " & p.Age)
		Next

The object-oriented way is probably beyond you now, but by the end of the class you'll be there. Keep smiling, it could be worse: trying to learn all this at 61. :D Sam