User Guide

Table Of Contents

Populating arrays with data 105

Populating arrays with data

Array elements can store any values, including queries, structures, and other arrays. You can use a

number of functions to populate an array with data, including

ArraySet, ArrayAppend,

ArrayInsertAt, and ArrayPrepend. These functions are useful for adding data to an existing

array.

In particular, you should master the following basic techniques:

• Populating an array with the ArraySet function

• Populating an array with the cfloop tag

• Populating an array from a query

The following sections describe these techniques.

Populating an array with the ArraySet function

You can use the

ArraySet function to populate a 1D array, or one dimension of a

multidimensional array, with some initial value, such as an empty string or zero. This can be

useful if you need to create an array of a certain size, but do not need to add data to it right away.

One reason to do this is so that you can refer to all the array indexes. If you refer to an array index

that does not contain some value, such as an empty string, you get an error.

The

ArraySet function has the following form:

ArraySet (arrayname, startrow, endrow, value)

The following example initializes the array myarray, indexes 1 to 100, with an empty string:

ArraySet (myarray, 1, 100, "")

Populating an array with the cfloop tag

The

cfloop tag provides a common and very efficient method for populating an array. The

following example uses a

cfloop tag and the MonthAsString function to populate a simple 1D

array with the names of the months. A second

cfloop outputs data in the array to the browser.

</cfloop>

#months[loopcount]#<br>

</cfoutput>

</cfloop>