Question

Which of the following is not a disadvantage of bit array?

(a) Without compression, they might become sparse

(b) Accessing individual bits is expensive

(c) Compressing bit array to byte/word array, the machine also has to support byte/word addressing

(d) Storing and Manipulating in the register set for long periods of time

This interesting question is from Bit Array in portion Arrays Types of Data Structures & Algorithms I

I had been asked this question in quiz.

Answer 1

The correct choice is (d) Storing and Manipulating in the register set for long periods of time

For explanation: Bit arrays allow small arrays of bits to be stored and manipulated in the register set for long periods of time with no memory accesses because of their ability to exploit bit-level parallelism, limit memory access, and maximally use the data cache, they often outperform many other data structures on practical data sets. This is an advantage of bit array. The rest are all disadvantages of bit array.