array offset

In computer programming, the stride of an array (also referred to as increment, pitch or step size) is the number of locations in memory between beginnings of successive array elements, measured in bytes or in units of the size of the array's elements. The stride cannot be smaller than the element size but can be larger, indicating extra space between elements.
An array with stride of exactly the same size as the size of each of its elements is contiguous in memory. Such arrays are sometimes said to have unit stride. Unit stride arrays are sometimes more efficient than non-unit stride arrays, but non-unit stride arrays can be more efficient for 2D or multi-dimensional arrays, depending on the effects of caching and the access patterns used. This can be attributed to the principle of locality, specifically spatial locality.

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