Programming

Passing
Arrays to
Functions
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 2

Passing Arrays as Parameters

 Arrays are always passed by reference.
 The “[ ]” in the formal parameter
specification indicates that the variable is
an array.
 It is a good practice to pass the dimension
of the array as another parameter.
 If the function must not change any
element of the array then const should be
used in the formal parameter specification
of that array.
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 3

Smallest Value
 Problem
 Find the smallest value in a list of integers
 Input
 A list of integers and a value indicating the
number of integers
 Output
 Smallest value in the list
 Note
 List remains unchanged after finding the
smallest value!
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 4

Passing array to function in C programming

There are three way to implement passing array

to function
 C – Array
 Function call by value in C
 Function call by reference in C
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 5
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 6

Passing array to function using call by

value method
 #include <stdio.h>
 void disp( char ch)
 {
 printf("%c ", ch); }
 int main() {
 char arr[] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'};
 for (int x=0; x<10; x++)
 disp (arr[x]);
 }
 return 0;
 }
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 7

Ouput

abcdefghij
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 8

Passing array to function using call by

reference

 When we pass the address of an array while

calling a function then this is called function
call by reference. When we pass an address
as an argument, the function declaration
should have a pointer as a parameter to
receive the passed address.
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 9

Example
1. #include <stdio.h>
2. void disp( int *num)
3. { printf("%d ", *num);
4. }
5. int main()
6. { int arr[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0};
7. for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
8. {
9. disp (&arr[i]);
10. } return 0;
11. }
COMP102 Prog. Fundamentals I: Passing Arrays to Function / Slide 10

Output

1234567890