Question

What is a key point to the organization of the items in an array that enables the use of an offset?

Answer 1

An array is a data structure, which can store a fixed size collection of elements of the same data type. An array is used to store a collection of data, but it is often more useful to think of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.

Insted of declaring individual variables, such as number1, number2, ..., you just declare one array variable number of integer integer type and use number1[0], number1[1] and,.... until last index. to represent individual variables. Here 0, 1, 2,.. last are index [offset] associated with variable and they are being used to represent individual elements available in the array. Offset allows us to access the elements in much faster way and it takes constant time, So performance is another factor when choosing arrays.