In this tutorial, we will learn following two ways to find out the sum of array elements:
1) Using Recursion
2) Using Pointers
Method 1: Sum of array elements using Recursion: Function calling itself
This program calls the user defined function sum_array_elements() and the function calls itself recursively. Here we have hardcoded the array elements but if you want user to input the values, you can use a for loop and scanf function, same way as I did in the next section (Method 2: Using pointers) of this post.
#include<stdio.h> int main() { int array[] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7}; int sum; sum = sum_array_elements(array,6); printf("\nSum of array elements is:%d",sum); return 0; } int sum_array_elements( int arr[], int n ) { if (n < 0) { //base case: return 0; } else{ //Recursion: calling itself return arr[n] + sum_array_elements(arr, n-1); } }
Output:
Sum of array elements is:28
Method 2: Sum of array elements using pointers
Here we are setting up the pointer to the base address of array and then we are incrementing pointer and using * operator to get & sum-up the values of all the array elements.
#include<stdio.h> int main() { int array[5]; int i,sum=0; int *ptr; printf("\nEnter array elements (5 integer values):"); for(i=0;i<5;i++) scanf("%d",&array[i]); /* array is equal to base address * array = &array[0] */ ptr = array; for(i=0;i<5;i++) { //*ptr refers to the value at address sum = sum + *ptr; ptr++; } printf("\nThe sum is: %d",sum); }
Output:
Enter array elements (5 integer values): 1 2 3 4 5 The sum is: 15
Leave a Reply