Maximum number of elements in an array vs. maximum indexer value
.net-4.5, arrays, c#, maxlength
Solution
The maximum index in any single dimension is 2,147,483,591
Remember that arrays can have multiple dimensions, so you could have a 2-D array that has up to 4,294,967,295 items, but each dimension can have a max length of 2,147,483,591.
So you can have a 2,147,483,591 X 2 array, but not a 1,000,000 X 1,000,000 array.
Problem
today I started wondering about something in the MSDN. This article demonstrates, how one can increase the memory allocatable by an array under .NET 4.5 and x64. This is a nice feature, but something in the description provided by Microsoft baffeles me. Under the section "Remarks" they say, that: The maximum index in any single dimension is 2,147,483,591 (0x7FFFFFC7) for byte arrays and arrays of single-byte structures, and 2,146,435,071 (0X7FEFFFFF) for other types. Since I mainly have `int[]` or `double[]` the latter number is relevant for my indexing. I can create an array with `int[] TestArray = new int[2146435071]`, which is fine. However, under the same section Microsoft states: The maximum number of elements in an array is UInt32.MaxValue. Which is (according to the MSDN): The value of this constant is 4,294,967,295; that is, hexadecimal 0xFFFFFFFF. Now. If I get that right, I can have an array with up to 4,294,967,295 elements (for example `ints`) but due to the array being indexed by an `int` and not an `uint` I am not able to access the "upper" half of my data? This confuses me a lot, sice it seems I am missing something essential here. I hope you can enlighten me Kind Regards EDIT: I understand that I can create multi-dimensional arrays, but an array of length 2e9 an width 2 seems a bit stupid. Aren't multi-dimensional arrays mapped to one-dimensional ones anyway?