Help me in understanding arrays in c++.

Question

Can anyone help in understanding arrays and multidimensional arrays? I want to know that in which way arrays are useful. Any suggestion and also i want to know that what is the difference between arrays and multidimensional arrays. Give me a brief example and answer about the questions i asked here please!

Answer 1

Array:
A collection or list of a single data-type.

If I create an int array of size 5, it's the same as doing:
int a, b, c, d, e;
However when it comes to printing these in a certain order it would become a mess. So an array is just a nice way of dealing with a bunch of the same data types, whether it being sorting, removing, or adding lots of data.

As for multidimensional, it gets a bit more complicated.

You may here a 2d array[][] is rows and columns, but that's kinda just an analogy to help see what it looks like, it is really an array of arrays.

array[][];
columns.
rows [0][0] [0][1]

It's really just

array [x]
array [x][0] [x][1]

The array in element [] is pointing to another array. So you have size*size more elements to deal with. However you can only grab information/data from the final array, because the array[] is just pointing to another array, not any data.

Example/
(In Java, please ignore any syntax differences to c++, it's the same concept)

int[][] arr = new int[5][4]
/*
Now i've made 5 arrays that point to other arrays of size 4.
*/
System.out.println(arr[2]);
Output: @371fwh7...
/*
This will give me the location in memory, or reference of array[2], which points to a bunch of other arrays.
*/

System.out.println(arr[2][3]);
Output: 0;

/*
This will actually give me data. I'm grabbing the arr[2] which is an array, and getting the [3] (or 4th) array that it's pointing to
*/

Hope that helps!