Get column from a two dimensional array

Taking a column is easy with the map function.

// a two-dimensional array
var two_d = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]];

// take the third column
var col3 = two_d.map(function(value,index) { return value[2]; });

Why bother with the slice at all? Just filter the matrix to find the rows of interest.

var interesting = two_d.filter(function(value,index) {return value[1]==5;});
// interesting is now [[4,5,6]]

Sadly, filter and map are not natively available on IE9 and lower. The MDN documentation provides implementations for browsers without native support.

You have to loop through each element in the 2d-array, and get the nth column.

    function getCol(matrix, col){
       var column = [];
       for(var i=0; i<matrix.length; i++){
          column.push(matrix[i][col]);
       }
       return column;
    }

    var array = [new Array(20), new Array(20), new Array(20)]; //..your 3x20 array
    getCol(array, 0); //Get first column

Use Array.prototype.map() with an arrow function:

const arrayColumn = (arr, n) => arr.map(x => x[n]);

const twoDimensionalArray = [
  [1, 2, 3],
  [4, 5, 6],
  [7, 8, 9],
];

console.log(arrayColumn(twoDimensionalArray, 0));

Note: Array.prototype.map() and arrow functions are part of ECMAScript 6 and not supported everywhere, see ECMAScript 6 compatibility table.

var data = [
    ["a1", "a2", "a3"],
    ["b1", "b2", "b3"],
    ["c1", "c2", "c3"]
];

var col0 = data.map(d => d[0]); // [ 'a1', 'b1', 'c1' ]

var col1 = data.map(d => d[1]); // [ 'a2', 'b2', 'c2' ]