Construction
Arrays of primitive values can be constructed in several ways. A literal value is written as follows:
a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Arrays can also be constructed by autorange expressions. The expression
begin n end m step k
constructs an array starting with n and proceeding in increments of k until m is reached. More precisely, it constructs
[n, n+k, n+2k, ..., n+rk]
where r is the largest integer such that n+rk <= m.
The expression
begin n count c step k
constructs an array of c elements beginning with n and proceeding in increments of k, that is,
[n, n+k, n+2k, ..., n+(c-1)k].
For example,
begin 10 end 15 step 2
and
begin 10 count 3 step 2
both construct the array:
[10, 12, 14].
The third way to construct an array is to use the
split function, which divides a string into array elements at whitespace. Quoted elements keep embedded whitespace and strip the quotes upon placement into the array. For example, on UNIX machines:
split(‘ls‘)
returns an array of the files in the current directory.
Related information