What is the maximum length of an array in Go, Java and C#?

Question

What is the maximum length of an array that I can declare in Go, Java and C#? Does it relate to the maximum memory at runtime? Or do they have a standard?

In java, the `length` of an array is an `int` field, so the max length of an array is determined by `Integer.MAX_VALUE`. — Luiggi Mendoza, Oct 29 '14 at 03:43
@LuiggiMendoza Appears to be `Integer.MAX_VALUE - 5`. See [here](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3039805/3558960) — Robby Cornelissen, Oct 29 '14 at 03:45
This is some information on the max array limit for C#. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241064(v=vs.110).aspx — deathismyfriend, Oct 29 '14 at 03:46
@RobbyCornelissen well, that answer is from 2010, so I would have to test it on JAva 8 and with more memory dedicated to the JVM and check if it gives the same error. — Luiggi Mendoza, Oct 29 '14 at 03:47

peterSO · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-29T09:36:03.377

The Go Programming Language Specification

Array types

An array is a numbered sequence of elements of a single type, called the element type. The number of elements is called the length and is never negative.

The length is part of the array's type; it must evaluate to a non-negative constant representable by a value of type int.

Numeric types

A numeric type represents sets of integer or floating-point values.

There is a set of predeclared numeric types with implementation-specific sizes:
uint     the set of all unsigned integers, either 32 or 64 bits
int      the set of all signed integers, same size as uint

Go array length is a value of type int, which is a 32 or 64 bit signed integer, depending on the compilation architecture (GOARCH), for example, 386 or amd64. It's also subject to any hardware or operating system memory size limits.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "runtime"
    "strconv"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println("int is", strconv.IntSize, "bits on", runtime.GOARCH)
}

Output:

int is 64 bits on amd64

What is the maximum length of an array in Go, Java and C#?

1 Answers1