[Year 12 SofDev] Records and Arrays

[Laurie Savage]

I have a problem. In Fitzpatrick and Keane p. 161 (and in the 2007 exam)
arrays and records are primarily differentiated by data type. So the text
says: "An array is an indexed collection of elements of the same type of
data"; "A ... record represents a group of different data elements".

 

But, in PHP, this works:

 

<?php 

$pizzaToppings = array('onion', 'tomato', 'cheese', 'anchovies', 'ham',
'pepperoni', 1.6, 200); 

 

echo "<h1>We like $pizzaToppings[5] PIZZA!</h1>";

 

$num = $pizzaToppings[6] * $pizzaToppings[7];

echo $num;

?>

 

i.e. the array is storing data of different types and not storing the
numeric data as a string. What am I missing here? I've done a search, but
these are the only references I've seen that define this as the main
difference. I've been labouring under the delusion that an array lives in
volatile memory and disappears once the application halts or reinitialises
and a record is written to disk. I know from the web that I'm not alone
here.

 

Laurie Savage

Pascoe Vale Girls College


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