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Slides Arrays Two Dimensional Arrays

Java supports multi-dimensional arrays like two-dimensional arrays through the use of nested arrays. A two-dimensional array can be thought of as a table or matrix with rows and columns, where each element is an array that can hold multiple values. To access elements in a two-dimensional array, two indices are used - one for the outer array to access the row and another for the inner array to access the column element.

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70 views12 pages

Slides Arrays Two Dimensional Arrays

Java supports multi-dimensional arrays like two-dimensional arrays through the use of nested arrays. A two-dimensional array can be thought of as a table or matrix with rows and columns, where each element is an array that can hold multiple values. To access elements in a two-dimensional array, two indices are used - one for the outer array to access the row and another for the inner array to access the column element.

Uploaded by

Pratham Mishra
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Java's nested Arrays

An array element can actually be an array. It's known as a nested array, or an array
assigned to an outer array's element.
This is how Java supports two and three dimensional arrays, of varying dimensions.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-Dimensional Array
A two-dimensional array can be thought of, as a table or matrix of values, with rows and
columns.
You can use an array initializer for this, which I'm showing on this slide.

Array Initializer formatted over multiple lines

Array Initializer declared on one line

COMPLETE JAVA MASTERCLASS


Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-Dimensional Array
Notice the two sets of square brackets on the left side of the assignment, in the declaration.
Using this type of declaration, tells Java we want a two dimensional array of integers.

Array Initializer formatted over multiple lines

Array Initializer declared on one line

COMPLETE JAVA MASTERCLASS


Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-Dimensional Array
Here we show the same declaration with array initializers, that mean the same thing.
The first example, just uses white space to make it more readable.
In this example, all the nested arrays, have the same length.
Array Initializer formatted over multiple lines

Array Initializer declared on one line

COMPLETE JAVA MASTERCLASS


Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-dimensional Array
A 2-dimensional array doesn't have to be a uniform matrix though.
This means the nested arrays can be different sizes, as we show with this next initialization
statement.

Here, we have an array with 3 elements.


Each element is an array of integers (a nested array).
Each nested array is a different length.
If you find that confusing, don't worry. It should all make sense shortly.
COMPLETE JAVA MASTERCLASS
Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-dimensional Array

You can initialize a two-dimensional array, and define the size of the nested arrays, as
shown here.

This statement says we have an array of 3 nested arrays, and each nested array will have
three ints.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-dimensional Array

The result of this initialization is shown in the table on this slide.


Java knows we want a 3x3 matrix of ints, and defaults the values of the nested arrays to
zeros, as it would for any array.

0 1 2
0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0
2 0 0 0

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-dimensional Array

You can initialize a two-dimensional array, without specifying the size of the nested arrays.
Here, we're specifying only the outer array size, by specifying the length, only in the first set
of square brackets.
We've left the second set of square brackets empty.

The result of this initialization is an array of 3 null elements.


We are limited to assigning integer arrays to these elements, but they can be any length.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Two-dimensional Array

There are a lot of ways to declare a two-dimensional array.


I'll just cover the two most common ways here.
The most common, and in my opinion, clearest way, to declare a two-dimensional array, is
to stack the square brackets as shown in the first example.

You can also split up the brackets as shown in the second example, and you'll likely come
across this in Java code out in the wild.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Accessing elements in multi-dimensional arrays

When we access a one dimensional array element, we do it with square brackets, and an
index value.
So this code sets the first element in the array to 50:

To access elements in a two-dimensional array, we use two indices, so this code sets the
first element in the first array to 50.

This next code sets the second element, in the second array to 10.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Accessing elements in multi-dimensional arrays

The code on this slide is similar to the code we have in our class, using nested traditional
for loops.
In this case, we're not using any local variables, but accessing array elements and variables
directly.

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Two-Dimensional Arrays
Accessing elements in multi-dimensional arrays
This table shows the indices, which are used, to
access the elements in the two-dimensional
array in our code sample.
When we loop through the outer loop, we're
accessing each row of elements.
j=0 j=1 j=2 j=3
We've highlighted the first row, which would be i=0 [ 0 ][ 0 ] [ 0 ][ 1 ] [ 0 ][ 2 ] [ 0 ][ 3 ]
the elements accessed, when i = 0 for the outer
for loop. i=1 [ 1 ][ 0 ] [ 1 ][ 1 ] [ 1 ][ 2 ] [ 1 ][ 3 ]
i=2 [ 2 ][ 0 ] [ 2 ][ 1 ] [ 2 ][ 2 ] [ 2 ][ 3 ]
When we loop through the inner loop, we're
accessing each cell in the array.
A cell in this matrix can be any type.
In our code, each is an integer value, and we
know they've all been initialized to zero.
COMPLETE JAVA MASTERCLASS
Two-Dimensional Arrays

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