7
Arrays and Strings

Arrays and strings are closely related. In the abstract sense, a string is just a (possibly read-only) array of characters. Most of the string-manipulation problems you encounter are based on your understanding of array data types, particularly in C where strings and character arrays are essentially identical. Other languages consider strings and character arrays as distinct data types, but there’s always a way to convert a string to an array and vice versa. When the two are different, it’s important to understand how and why they diverge. In addition, not all array problems involve strings, so understanding how arrays work in the abstract and how they’re implemented by the language you use is crucial to answering array-focused problems.