Access and Removal

Section 23.12 Access and Removal

Accessing an item to either get the existing value or set a new one is straightforward. We simply perform the desired operation on the corresponding index in the array.

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template<typename T>
T ArrayList<T>::get(int location) const {
    return m_arr[location];
}

template<typename T>
void ArrayList<T>::set(int location, const T& newValue) {
    m_arr[location] = newValue;
}

We likely want to sanity check the location to make sure it is valid before accessing the array. To do so, we can add something like this to the start of each of those functions:

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if (location < 0 || location >= m_size) {
    throw std::out_of_range("Index out of range");
}

That way asking for the item at location -1 or 4 in a four item ArrayList (where only 0-3 are valid indexes) will throw an exception instead of accessing invalid memory.

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Note 23.12.1.

Again, we are intentionally building a simplified version of std::vector. Although our ArrayList is conceptually the same as a vector, it doesn’t provide exactly the same functionality. std::vector uses more complex code to handle element access.

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std::vector does not have separate set and get functions. Instead, it provides an T& ArrayList<T>::at(int location) function. Because this function returns a reference, it allow consumers to write myList.at(2) = 100;. But it also provides a const version of exactly the same function: const T& ArrayList<T>::at(int location) const. The const version does not allow for assigning a new value, but can be used in contexts where we have said the vector itself is const.

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It also provides an overridden operator[] that does the same thing as .at() but skips the out_of_range check and just assume that the index is valid.

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Removing an item from the end of the ArrayList is also straightforward. We simply decrease m_size by 1. Doing so excludes the old last item from the range of valid indexes. The value will still be in the array, but we no longer consider it part of the ArrayList!

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template<typename T>
void ArrayList<T>::removeEnd() {
    m_size--;
}

For example, if we call intList.removeEnd() after inserting 40, the ArrayList would look then look like:

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The intList variable contains an m_size of 3 and m_capacity of 5. It also has a pointer to an array named m_arr. That array contains [10, 20, 30, 40, ???]. The 40 is not considered part of the ArrayList anymore. — Figure 23.12.1. `intList` after removing the last item. The values that are not considered part of the ArrayList (40 and ???) are shown in gray.
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Again, we might want to add some sanity checking. If there is nothing in the ArrayList and removeEnd() is called, we should make sure not to set m_size to a negative value. We could either choose to throw an exception or simply do nothing in that case. (The final version of our code will throw an exception. See Listing 23.16.1.)

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