Syntax for creating a two-dimensional array in Java
We can declare a two dimensional array and directly store elements at the time of its declaration as:
int marks[][]={{50,60,55,67,70},{62,65,70,70,81},{72,66,77,80,69}};
Here int represents integer type elements stored into the array and the array name is 'marks'. int is the datatype for all the elements represented inside the "{" and "}" braces because an array is a collection of elements having the same data type.
Coming back to our statement written above: each row of elements should be written inside the curly braces. The rows and the elements in each row should be separated by a commas.
Now observe the statement: you can get there are 3 rows and 5 columns, so the JVM creates 3 * 5 = 15 blocks of memory. These blocks can be individually referred ta as:
marks[0][0] marks[0][1] marks[0][2] marks[0][3] marks[0][4]
marks[1][0] marks[1][1] marks[1][2] marks[1][3] marks[1][4]
marks[2][0] marks[2][1] marks[2][2] marks[2][3] marks[2][4]
NOTE:
If you want to store n elements then the array index starts from zero and ends at n-1.
Another way of creating a two dimensional array is by declaring the array first and then allotting memory for it by using new operator.
int marks[][]; // declare marks array
marks = new int[3][5]; // allocate memory for storing 15 elements
By combining the above two we can write:
int marks[][] = new int[3][5];
You can create them just the way others have mentioned. One more point to add: You can even create a skewed two-dimensional array with each row, not necessarily having the same number of collumns, like this:
int array[][] = new int[3][];
array[0] = new int[3];
array[1] = new int[2];
array[2] = new int[5];
Try the following:
int[][] multi = new int[5][10];
... which is a short hand for something like this:
int[][] multi = new int[5][];
multi[0] = new int[10];
multi[1] = new int[10];
multi[2] = new int[10];
multi[3] = new int[10];
multi[4] = new int[10];
Note that every element will be initialized to the default value for int
, 0
, so the above are also equivalent to:
int[][] multi = new int[][]{
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 },
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 },
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 },
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 },
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 }
};