Thread: Vector

hey all i came across this term while learning about vectors:
"Bounds checking"

what does that mean?

there is a line in the tutorial that says:

Unfortunately, the [] operator still does not provide bounds checking. There is an alternative way of accessing the vector, using the function at, which does provide bounds checking at an additional cost.

kindly help...

Imagine something like this:

Code:

int num_list[5] = {1, 5, 77, 3, 35}; // has only 5 elements

cout << num_list[6] << endl; // but 6-th element is also accessible
cout << num_list[-7] << endl; // You can do this too

Bounds checking means that in 5-item array only elements from 0 to 4 are accessible.