Backing array
A backing array is the underlying array that stores the elements of a resizable sequence or slice.
100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
A backing array is the underlying array that stores the elements referenced by a Go slice.
- How it is used
- Explains slice aliasing, allocation costs, memory retention, and capacity-dependent data races.
- How deep it goes
- Traces slicing and append through shared storage, then demonstrates garbage-collection retention and copy-based fixes.
- Examples
- Uses a five-byte message type retaining a million-byte array and a two-element slice retaining allocations from 1,000 structs.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug backing-array sharing and retention; choose preallocation, copying, or clearing references according to the problem.
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100 C++ Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
A backing array is the dynamically managed array that provides storage for a resizable vector.
- How it is used
- Replaces fixed arrays when element counts are dynamic and index placeholders would be awkward or misleading.
- How deep it goes
- Explains allocation, copying, growth, and reserve, but stops short of implementation-level memory details.
- Examples
- Uses Person arrays, push_back, manual allocation, and reserve(count) to contrast fixed and resizable storage.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via std::vector, pushing elements dynamically and reserving estimated capacity to limit reallocations.
Read how 100 C++ Mistakes and How to Avoid Them explains backing array →
Go by Example
A backing array is the array that stores the elements referenced by a Go slice.
- How it is used
- Explains slice aliasing in variadic test helpers and allocation costs when reading HTTP response bodies.
- How deep it goes
- Explains shared storage, copying, append-driven reallocation, and memory pressure without detailing slice internals beyond backing arrays.
- Examples
- Uses a test runner’s argument slice and an HTTP response body consumed with io.ReadAll.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose unintended slice mutations and recognize when append-based reading may create repeated allocations.
Related concepts
- slicingused by · Slicing selects or partitions a portion of an indexed sequence or multidimensional array, often along specified indices or dimensions.
- substringused by · A substring is a contiguous sequence of characters contained within a larger string or character sequence.
- vectorpart of · A vector is an ordered, indexed sequence of elements, often numerical, represented as a mathematical quantity or a computational collection.
- built-in functionproduced by · A built-in function is a predefined callable operation supplied by a programming language, runtime, library, or execution environment.
- arraykind of · An array is an indexed, ordered collection of elements arranged in one or more dimensions, with elements accessed by position.
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