Array Sizing

Ok, here goes...

I have read and searched several threas here that are concerned with the size of arrays and how they should not be too large. I have seen that an answer to this is vectors. I have absolutely no idead what vectors are. What I want to do is have three single dimension arrays that are size 1,000,000. Yes, I know this is probably a bad way to do it but it is also a very simple way to do what I want. I guess out of all of my ramblings the question is how do I get Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 to accept this array size?

Thank you,

Elliott

The usual problem is one of running out of stack space when you make such large arrays local parameters to a function.
For example, this is generally a bad idea

Code:

---

int main ( ) {
  int big[1000000];
}

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You can make them static, which preserves scope, but does not actually place them on the stack, like so.

Code:

---

int main ( ) {
  static int big[1000000];
}

---

If you don't know how many you need until the program is running, then you have to dynamically allocate them.

Code:

---

int main ( ) {
  int howmany = 1000000; // or however you work it out.
  int *big = new int[howmany];
}

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No matter which way you go, you still have big[index] type access and any of them can be passed (as a pointer) to other functions without rewriting the function.