Hoo Boy!

That's an old southwestern expression dating back to my Santa Fe days.

Every now and then someone throws me a curve ball that kinda slides by on the inside corner. Usually it would be a called strike, but I'm gonna take a swing at this one. If I miss I'm going to take a walk and you're next up at bat. (and I don't even like baseball.)

Chad from Chad's Macro Mania dropped this one on me and it's going to be the whole shebang this month.

Chad wanted me to define "Arrays".  Now Chad knows perfectly well what an array is but, you see the guy isn't into "Geek Speak" he's into programming and he knows that would confuse a bunch of us so he asked me to kind of iron the kinks out. That's simple, Chad.

Simple in the extreme: "Arrays" are two or more "Array"?  NOT!

Arrays are sneaky, they can have a single dimension, in which case they are called a "Vector." Or they can have two or more dimensions and change their name to "Matrix."

Arrays - Is a term commonly used in programming and refers to a group of objects that are all the same type and size. The catch is, what the heck is an "Object?" Objects - Generally speaking - can be any shape or picture that you can select individually from an array, manipulate and produce on a visual display. Or it can be a self-contained group which contains both data and the means for manipulating that data. That one should muddy the waters a bit, but read on.

Like I said, "Hoo Boy!"

O.K. Let's get on with it. The "Objects" in an "Array" are called array elements. An array can contain "Integers," which are simply whole numbers: no decimals, no fractions. Or, they may consist of "Characters".  Although the term usually refers to letters, punctuation, etc., all you Geek Speakers out there know a "character" is any symbol which requires one byte of storage space. And then there are Data Types. Like I said, in an array all elements must be of the same size and type of data. Data Type - That is. You and I, well at least you, can look at an object and know if it is a cat, a dog, or a tree. You check out the characteristics and say, "Yup, 'at there is a dawg." You just know by its characteristics what kind of thing that is. Computers can't do that - Yet. When you are programming you have to tell that machine whether it is looking at a NUMBER WITH A DECIMAL POINT (floating-point) a CHARACTER (readable text) or an INTEGER (whole number) and those are all different types of data. Once you have a box full of any one of those things you have yourself an ARRAY. And Chad, that was more fun than I've had since my last trip to the dentist.