Replace fixed size arrays with std::array?

Question

Working with legacy code, I asked myself should I replace fixed sized C-style arrays with the new std::array? E. g.

static const int TABLE_SIZE = 64; double table[TABLE_SIZE]; 

replace with

std::array<double, TABLE_SIZE> table; 

While I see the benefits from using std::vector for variable size arrays, I don't see them with fixed size. table.size() is known anyways, std::begin(), std::end() as free functions can be used for STL-algorithms with C-style arrays too. So besides being more standard compliant, do I miss more benefits? Is it worth the work to replace all occurrences or is it considered to be best practice?

Answer 1

AFAIK std::array just provides a nicer STL-like interface to deal with rather than normal C-arrays. In terms of performances and capabilities the two choices boil down to be pretty much the same but std::array can be used as a standard container.

Another feature: they might be treated like tuples since they provide tuple-like access functions.

Last but not the least as user2079303 noticed: if your code is going to be used by novice programmers, it can prevent the array decaying process when passing it as an argument.

If you're wondering if you should just replace all your C-style arrays with std::arrays, the answer is yes if you're going to exploit some of the newly available features and/or rewrite some of your code to take advantage of those capabilities. If you're just plain substituting C-arrays with std::arrays (without touching anything else) it might not be worth it.