Why do we do this...

Section 16.0

• a list of names in a database
• a list of file names in a folder
• the list (collection) of bytes in an mp3 file
• the text of a web page.

• creating a new list
• inserting a new item in the list (e.g. insert an item at the end of the list, or insert a new item at position number 37)
• amending an existing item (e.g. amend item number 32 to "Mike" )
• deleting an item (e.g. delete item number 24)
• recalling an item (e.g. store item number 27 into x)

Here are the notes on arrays. arraynet.doc

Arrays are quite primitive - but all programming languages have them. Collections are a newer idea and a re more powerful. Most modern languages have some kind of collection facility. In VB and Java, we have the ArrayList. In fact, behind the scenes of a list box, something like an arraylist is used to store the data.

However, remember that they are all similar. We have a set of items, and we can fetch a single item and process it.