The addressing formula is completely defined by the dimension d, the base address B, and the increments c1, c2, …, ck. It is often useful to pack these parameters into a record called the array'sdescriptor or stride vector or dope vector. The size of each element, and the minimum and maximum values allowed for each index may also be included in the dope vector. The dope vector is a complete handle for the array, and is a convenient way to pass arrays as arguments to procedures. Many useful array slicing operations (such as selecting a sub-array, swapping indices, or reversing the direction of the indices) can be performed very efficiently by manipulating the dope vector.