F.2.6 Array Storage

Arrays are stored with their elements in a specific storage order. The elements are actually stored in a linear sequence of storage elements.

C arrays are stored in row-major order; the last subscript in a multidimensional array varies the fastest.

String data types are simply arrays of char elements. The maximum number of characters allowed in a string literal or wide string literal (after concatenation) is 4,294,967,295.

See F.1 Storage Allocation for information on the size limit of storage allocated on the stack.

Table F–15 Array Types and Storage

Type	Maximum Number of Elements for SPARC and x86	Maximum Number of Elements for SPARC V9
char	4,294,967,295	2,305,843,009,213,693,951
short	2,147,483,647	1,152,921,504,606,846,975
int	1,073,741,823	576,460,752,303,423,487
long	1,073,741,823	288,230,376,151,711,743
float	1,073,741,823	576,460,752,303,423,487
double	536,870,911	288,230,376,151,711,743
long double	268,435,451	144,115,188,075,855,871
long long [Not valid in -Xc mode with -xc99=none.]	536,870,911	288,230,376,151,711,743

Static and global arrays can accommodate many more elements.