Paradigm: Array

Array programming is a high-level programming paradigm which generalizes certain operations so that they can be applied to arrays of values at once instead of individual values one at a time.

The paradigm assumes that the elements of the array possess similar properties and are processed in a similar way each time the operation is applied to the array. Therefore the array processing can be implemented in the language itself, allowing the programmer to manipulate an array as a whole.

The natural examples of generalized operations are vector and matrix operations: dot and cross products, matrix multiplication and invertion, etc. Some languages don’t use array programming as a paradigm but still provide additional libraries of generalized operations for arrays manipulations or tools of implementing such operations.

Array programming is the opposite of scalar programming.