Softimage SDK Programmer's Guide > Script Development > Data Types and Return Values > What is 'Type'? >

# Array

An Array isn't really a data type, but a container that holds more than one value, such as point coordinate values. Arrays identify their members by an index number, which starts at 0. So the first member in an array is the item at index 0, the second member is the item at index 1, and so on.

The specific array format supported in ActiveX is called a SAFEARRAY. The Variant data type can contain a SAFEARRAY which can be multidimensional.

For C#, the System.Array class supports multidimensional arrays. SAFEARRAYs are generally returned wrapped in a System.Object object (roughly corresponding to a Variant) containing the System.Array object.

Important

For JScript, you can convert SAFEARRAYs to native JScript arrays using the VBScript.toArray() method (see msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/jscript7/html/jsmthtoarray.asp). For more information, see Working with Arrays (and Other Collections) in Softimage.

Tip

See Comparing Data Types across Languages for a table that compares the single-precision floating point data type across several different languages.

For high-level information about how these languages approach data type in general, see one of the following topics:

- Type in VBScript

- Type in JScript

- Type in Python

- Type in C++ (Comparison)

- Type in C# (Comparison)