Multidimensional Arrays in CPP

What is an array?

• An array is a collection of similar data items stored in a contiguous memory locations
• Here, Multidimensional Array means data in an array is stored in the tabular form  ( array of arrays ) 

Syntax:

data_type  name_of_array[size1][size2][size3]......[sizeN]
Where,
Data_type - Type of data to be stored in an array . E.g : int, double, char, etc
Name_of_array - name provided to the array
size1,size2..sizeN - Dimensions 

Example:

Two dimensional array,  
int arr[20][30]  
      
Three dimensional array,
char  alpha[10][20][30]

Size of Multidimensional Array:

• The total number of elements present in the multi-dimensional array is the product of all dimensions
• In the above example, the number of elements present in arr[20][30] is 600 ( 20*30 = 600 ) 
• char alpha[10][20][30] has 6000 elements ( 10*20*30 = 6000 )

Two Dimensional Array ( 2D Array ) :

Syntax:

data_type name_of_array[size1][size2]

Example:

int arr[2][3] - This denotes that name of the array is arr and it has 2 rows and 3 columns

Elements in the 2D array are accessed in the form of arr[i][j] where i is the row number and j is the column number. The rows are numbered from 0 to x-1 where x is the number of rows in the array. The columns are numbered from 0 to y-1 where y is the number of columns in an array.

Initialization of 2D arrays:

• Type-1

The above array has 2 rows and 5 columns. The elements will be filled in the 2D array in the order mentioned above. The first 5 elements (2,4,6,8,10) will be present in the 1st row, the second 5 elements (12,14,16,20,22)  will be present in the 2nd row

• Type-2

Using braces is the better method compared to type-1. Each nested brace represents the Row of Array.

Code:

#include<bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;

int main() {
  int array[2][3] = {{1,2,3},{4,5,6}};

  for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++) {

      cout << " array[" << i << "][" << j << "] = " << array[i][j] << endl;

    }
  }
  return 0;
}

Three Dimensional Array ( 3D Array )

Initialization of 3D arrays:

Initialization is the same compared to the 2D array only difference is we need to add 1 extra dimension.

• Type 1

• Type 2

Accessing elements in a 3d array is similar to a 2d array. The only difference is we add an extra dimension to it. 

Code:

#include<bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;

int main() {
  int array[2][3][2] = {
        { {11, 12}, {13, 14}, {15, 16} },
        { {17, 18}, {19, 20}, {21, 22} }
    };

  for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++) {
      for (int k = 0; k < 2; k++) {
        cout << " array[" << i << "][" << j << "][" << k << "] = " << 
        array[i][j][k] << endl;
      }
    }
  }
  return 0;
}

Special thanks to Shreyas Vishwakarma for contributing to this article on takeUforward. If you also wish to share your knowledge with the takeUforward fam, please check out this article