When to use an array?

If your program performs look-up operations significantly more frequently than insertions and deletions, arrays can be a good choice because they provide fast, constant-time access to elements via their indexes (240611100301).

You can access or modify any element in an array using the [] operator, which has a constant time complexity of O(1):

int arr[10] = {0};

// access/modify = O(1)
arr[2] = 7;

// read = O(1)
printf("%d\n", arr[2]);

However, if your program requires frequent insertions and deletions, arrays might not be the best choice. This is because inserting or deleting elements in the middle of an array requires shifting elements, leading to an O(n) time complexity in the worst case.

For efficient insertions and deletions, consider using linked lists or hash tables.