Parallel array


In computing, a group of parallel arrays is a form of implicit data structure that uses multiple arrays to represent a singular array of records. It keeps a separate, homogeneous data array for each field of the record, each having the same number of elements. Then, objects located at the same index in each array are implicitly the fields of a single record. Pointers from one object to another are replaced by array indices. This contrasts with the normal approach of storing all fields of each record together in memory. For example, one might declare an array of 100 names, each a string, and 100 ages, each an integer, associating each name with the age that has the same index.

Examples

An example in C using parallel arrays:

int ages = ;
char *names = ;
int parent = ;
for

in Perl :

my %data = ;
for $i

Or, in Python:

first_names =
last_names =
heights_in_cm =
for i in range:
print
print
  1. Using zip:
for first_name, last_name, height_in_cm in zip:
print
print

Pros and cons

Parallel arrays have a number of practical advantages over the normal approach:
Several of these advantage depend strongly on the particular programming language and implementation in use.
However, parallel arrays also have several strong disadvantages, which serves to explain why they are not generally preferred:
The bad locality of reference can be alleviated in some cases: if a structure can be divided into groups of fields that are generally accessed together, an array can be constructed for each group, and its elements are records containing only these subsets of the larger structure's fields.. This is a valuable way of speeding up access to very large structures with many members, while keeping the portions of the structure tied together. An alternative to tying them together using array indexes is to use references to tie the portions together, but this can be less efficient in time and space.
Another alternative is to use a single array, where each entry is a record structure. Many language provide a way to declare actual records, and arrays of them. In other languages it may be feasible to simulate this by declaring an array of n*m size, where m is the size of all the fields together, packing the fields into what is effectively a record, even though the particular language lacks direct support for records. Some compiler optimizations, particularly for vector processors, are able to perform this transformation automatically when arrays of structures are created in the program.