How to Create a Dynamic Array Inside a Structure? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 19 Mar, 2024

In C, the structure can store the array data types as one of its members. In this article, we will learn how to create a dynamic array inside a structure in C.

Creating a Dynamic Array Inside a Structure in C

To create a dynamic array inside a structure in C, define a structure that contains a pointer to the array type and a variable to store the size of the array. Then initialize the dynamic array with that size using malloc() to dynamically allocate memory for the array.

Syntax to Create a Dynamic Array Inside a Structure

// Define the structure
struct StructName {
dataType* arrayName;
int size;
};

// In function
StructName variableName;
variableName.arrayName = new dataType[size];
variableName.size = size;

Here,

• StructName is the name of the structure.
• dataType is the type of data that the array holds
• arrayName is the name of the array.
• variableName is the name of the structure variable.
• size is the size of the array.

C++ Program to Create a Dynamic Array Inside a Structure

The below program demonstrates how we can create a dynamic array inside a structure in C++.

C `

// C Program to illustrate how to create a dynamic array // inside a structure #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h>

// Define the structure typedef struct myStruct { int* myArray; int size; } MyStruct;

int main() { // Define the size of the array int size = 5;

// Create a structure variable
MyStruct s;

// Create a dynamic array inside the structure
s.myArray = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int) * size);
s.size = size;

// Initialize the array
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
    s.myArray[i] = i;
}

// Print the array elements
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
    printf("%d ", s.myArray[i]);
}

// Delete the dynamic array
free(s.myArray);

return 0;

}

`

**Time Complexity: O(N), here N is the size of the array.
**Auxiliary Space: O(N)