Working with Arrays

This lesson covers the basics of using an array in C, so you can handle multiple pieces of data together. It's for anyone searching "C array tutorial."

An array is like a "shelf" with many numbered slots. Use { } to specify an array's initial values all at once.

The example creates an array with const char *fruits[] = {"apple", "orange", "grape"}, then uses a for loop to print each item with its number. A C array has no property for getting its length — you need to manage the element count yourself.

A common early mistake is not knowing that accessing a position beyond the array's size doesn't produce an error in C — it just triggers undefined behavior. Out-of-bounds access is a frequent source of bugs, so extra care is needed.

In real projects, managing array sizes to use limited memory efficiently is a foundational C programming skill.

📖 Reference code

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    const char *fruits[] = {"apple", "orange", "grape"};
    for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
        printf("%d: %s\n", i + 1, fruits[i]);
    }
    return 0;
}

✍️ Your code

Type your code, then press "Run"

🧪 This site can't compile or run C directly, so it checks on the spot whether what you typed matches the reference code (scoring happens entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere).