C++ Arrays and Loops

Loop Through an Array

You can loop through the array elements with the for loop.

The following example outputs all elements in the cars array:

// Create an array of strings
string cars[5] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda", "Tesla"};

// Loop through strings
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
  cout << cars[i] << "\n";
}

This example outputs the index of each element together with its value:

string cars[5] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda", "Tesla"};
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
  cout << i << " = " << cars[i] << "\n";
}

And this example shows how to loop through an array of integers:

int myNumbers[5] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50};
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
  cout << myNumbers[i] << "\n";
}

The foreach Loop

There is also a “for-each loop” (introduced in C++ version 11 (2011)), which is used exclusively to loop through elements in an array (and other data structures, like vectors and lists):

for (type variableName : arrayName) {
  // code block to be executed
}

The following examples output all elements in an array using a “for-each loop”:

// Create an array of integers
int myNumbers[5] = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50};

// Loop through integers
for (int i : myNumbers) {
  cout << i << "\n";
}

// Create an array of strings
string cars[5] = {"Volvo", "BMW", "Ford", "Mazda", "Tesla"};

// Loop through strings
for (string car : cars) {
  cout << car << "\n";
}