Arrays vs Vectors: Introductory Similarities and Differences [closed]

Question

arrays:

• are a builtin language construct;
• come almost unmodified from C89;
• provide just a contiguous, indexable sequence of elements; no bells and whistles;
• are of fixed size; you can't resize an array in C++ (unless it's an array of POD and it's allocated with malloc);
• their size must be a compile-time constant unless they are allocated dynamically;
• they take their storage space depending from the scope where you declare them;
• if dynamically allocated, you must explicitly deallocate them;
• if they are dynamically allocated, you just get a pointer, and you can't determine their size; otherwise, you can use sizeof (hence the common idiom sizeof(arr)/sizeof(*arr), that however fails silently when used inadvertently on a pointer);
• automatically decay to a pointers in most situations; in particular, this happens when passing them to a function, which usually requires passing a separate parameter for their size;
• can't be returned from a function; (Unless it is std::array)
• can't be copied/assigned directly;
• dynamical arrays of objects require a default constructor, since all their elements must be constructed first;

std::vector:

• is a template class;
• is a C++ only construct;
• is implemented as a dynamic array;
• grows and shrinks dynamically;
• automatically manage their memory, which is freed on destruction;
• can be passed to/returned from functions (by value);
• can be copied/assigned (this performs a deep copy of all the stored elements);
• doesn't decay to pointers, but you can explicitly get a pointer to their data (&vec[0] is guaranteed to work as expected);
• always brings along with the internal dynamic array its size (how many elements are currently stored) and capacity (how many elements can be stored in the currently allocated block);
• the internal dynamic array is not allocated inside the object itself (which just contains a few "bookkeeping" fields), but is allocated dynamically by the allocator specified in the relevant template parameter; the default one gets the memory from the freestore (the so-called heap), independently from how where the actual object is allocated;
• for this reason, they may be less efficient than "regular" arrays for small, short-lived, local arrays;
• when reallocating, the objects are copied (moved, in C++11);
• does not require a default constructor for the objects being stored;
• is better integrated with the rest of the so-called STL (it provides the begin()/end() methods, the usual STL typedefs, ...)

Also consider the "modern alternative" to arrays - std::array; I already described in another answer the difference between std::vector and std::array, you may want to have a look at it.

I'll add that arrays are very low-level constructs in C++ and you should try to stay away from them as much as possible when "learning the ropes" -- even Bjarne Stroustrup recommends this (he's the designer of C++).

Vectors come very close to the same performance as arrays, but with a great many conveniences and safety features. You'll probably start using arrays when interfacing with API's that deal with raw arrays, or when building your own collections.

Those reference pretty much answered your question. Simply put, vectors' lengths are dynamic while arrays have a fixed size. when using an array, you specify its size upon declaration:

int myArray[100];
myArray[0]=1;
myArray[1]=2;
myArray[2]=3;

for vectors, you just declare it and add elements

vector<int> myVector;
myVector.push_back(1);
myVector.push_back(2);
myVector.push_back(3);
...

at times you wont know the number of elements needed so a vector would be ideal for such a situation.