In C programming, an array can be passed as an argument to a function. We can pass a single array element of one dimensional or multi-dimensional array, or we can pass entire array to a function.
In this chapter we will learn how to pass an array as an argument to a function.
Passing a single array element of one dimensional array to a function. As we have read in function. There are two method to pass an argument to a function
Method 1: Pass by value
| #include<stdio.h>void print_array_element(int array_element){
printf(“%d\n”, array_element); } int main() { int num[5] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50}; /* Passing a single array element at index 1 */ print_array_element(num[1]); return 0; } Output : 20 |
Method 1: Pass by reference
| #include<stdio.h>void print_array_element(int *array_element){
printf(“%d\n”, *array_element); } int main() { int num[5] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50}; /* Passing a single array element at index 1, using call by reference */ print_array_element(&num[1]); return 0; }
Output : 20 |
Also we can pass entire array to a function as an argument. While passing an entire array to a function, the name of the array is passed as an argument means starting address of array.
Example program of passing an entire array of one dimensional array to a function.
| Write a program to find sum of the numbers of an array.#include<stdio.h>int sum_array_element(int array_elements[]){
int i,sum = 0; for(i=0; i<=4; i++) sum = sum + array_elements[i]; return sum; } int main() { int sum; int num[5] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50}; /* Passing an entire array, only name of array is passed */ sum = sum_array_element(num); printf(“Sum = %d\n”,sum); return 0; }
Output : Sum = 150 |
Passing a multi-dimensional array to a function as an argument.
| Similarly as one dimensional array, we can pass an single element of multi-dimensional array.#include<stdio.h>void print_array_element(int array_element){
printf(“%d\n”, array_element); } int main() { int num[4][3] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}; /* Passing a single array element at index [2][1] i.e 8 */ print_array_element(num[2][1]); return 0; } Output : 8 |
Passing an entire two dimensional array to a function as an argument
| #include<stdio.h>int sum_array_element(int array_elements[][]){
int i,j,sum = 0; for(i=0; i<4; i++) for(j=0; j<3; j++) sum = sum + array_elements[i][j]; return sum; } int main() { int sum; int num[4][3] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}; /* Passing an entire array, only name of array is passed */ sum = sum_array_element(num); printf(“Sum = %d\n”,sum); return 0; } Output : Sum = 78 |