arrays.md

Arrays

An array represents an indexed collection of elements of the same type (called the base type). You can work with any element directly via its index. An index numeration begins with a zero. Arrays are supported in San Andreas, LCS and VCS.

General Syntax

San Andreas:

<array name>(<index var name>,<size><type>)

$index = 0
$array($index,10i) = 1

<array name>: a local or global variable
<index var name>: any variable containing an index of the element to read or write
<size>: a value between 1 and 255 (inclusive)
<type>: one of characters i f s v:

Letter	Item Type	Item Size (bytes)
i	integer	4
f	float	4
s	string	8
v	string	16

Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories:

In LCS, VCS, array elements are only 4 bytes in length. Therefore, there is no need in type declaration.

<array name>(<index var name>,<size>)

$index = 0
$array($index,10) = 1

Array Declaration

Arrays can be declared using the var keyword (similar to variables):

var <array name>: array <size> of <type>

var $FloatArray: array 10 of Float

You can declare arrays of primitive types (such as numbers or strings) using a more concise syntax:

<type> <array name>[<size>]

The type can be one of the following: Int, Float, String, or LongString:

int intArray[10]
float floatArray[10]
string stringArray[10]
longstring longStringArray[10]

Accessing array elements after declaration

After declaring an array, you can access its elements using square brackets:

var $FloatArray: array 10 of Float

$index = 0

// increasing value of the first element by 100
$FloatArray[$index] += 100.0

// same
$FloatArray[0] += 100.0

Elements of an array containing string literals can be accessed using string variables:

// initializing first three elements of the $strings array
s$strings[0] = 'str1'
s$strings[1] = 'str2'
s$strings[2] = 'str3'

An array can be declared as a collection of class instances, its methods are available for each element:

var $players: array 2 of Player

$players[0].Build

{% hint style="info" %} By default, the disassembler prints array elements with the numbers as indexes in the GTA SA edit mode. The same feature is available in LCS and VCS but is disabled by default. You can turn this feature on and off using the debug option CONSTANT_INDEXES. {% endhint %}