API docs state that Arrays are fixed size, but they aren't

> One would hope that CIQ uses something like a linked-list to make the operations efficient.

I don’t think it does. You can tell by creating a handful of Number arrays of different sizes (e.g. 1 element, 10 elements, 100 elements), running the app in the sim, and using the memory viewer.

You will find that there’s a certain amount of overhead for the array object itself (15 bytes). Each element takes exactly 5 bytes (1 bytes for type and 4 bytes for value).

Besides, implementing an array via linked-list would only be more time efficient for the use cases of adding and removing elements.

For other use cases, the performance would be a lot worse:

e.g. Read all items from 1000-element array:

(implemented as an actual array): this is basically a single memcpy of 5000 bytes

(implemented as a linked list): (follow pointer, copy 5 bytes) x 1000

e.g. Read item from arbitrary array index:

(implemented as an actual array): O(1) lookup

(implemented as a linked list): O(n) lookup (unless you also have a hash table to map array indices to individual items)

Clearly a linked-list would be a lot worse than an array in terms of space (memory) efficiency.

> One would hope that CIQ uses something like a linked-list to make the operations efficient.

I don’t think it does. You can tell by creating a handful of Number arrays of different sizes (e.g. 1 element, 10 elements, 100 elements), running the app in the sim, and using the memory viewer.

You will find that there’s a certain amount of overhead for the array object itself (15 bytes). Each element takes exactly 5 bytes (1 bytes for type and 4 bytes for value).

Besides, implementing an array via linked-list would only be more time efficient for the use cases of adding and removing elements.

For other use cases, the performance would be a lot worse:

e.g. Read all items from 1000-element array:

(implemented as an actual array): this is basically a single memcpy of 5000 bytes

(implemented as a linked list): (follow pointer, copy 5 bytes) x 1000

e.g. Read item from arbitrary array index:

(implemented as an actual array): O(1) lookup

(implemented as a linked list): O(n) lookup (unless you also have a hash table to map array indices to individual items)

Clearly a linked-list would be a lot worse than an array in terms of space (memory) efficiency.

Yes, that makes good sense. It would be nice to have some knowledge of the internals since it would help with understanding the implications of various design decisions in terms of memory usage and performance.