Sams Teach Yourself C in 21 Days

2. The array multicontains two elements.


3. Each of these two elements contains four elements.


4. Each of the four elements is of type int.
   You read a multidimensional array declaration starting with the array name and moving
   to the right, one set of brackets at a time. When the last set of brackets (the last dimen-
   sion) has been read, you jump to the beginning of the declaration to determine the array’s
   basic data type.
   Under the array-of-arrays scheme, you can visualize a multidimensional array as shown
   in Figure 15.3.

390 Day 15

FIGURE15.2

The components of a

multidimensional array

declaration.

int multi[2][4];

4 1 23

FIGURE15.3

A two-dimensional

array can be visualized

as an array of arrays.

multi multi[0]

multi[1][3]

Now, let’s get back to the topic of array names as pointers. (Today’s lesson is about

pointers, after all!) As with a one-dimensional array, the name of a multidimensional

array is a pointer to the first array element. Continuing with our example,multiis a

pointer to the first element of the two-dimensional array that was declared as int

multi[2][4]. What exactly is the first element of multi? It isn’t the type intvariable

multi[0][0], as you might think. Remember that multiis an array of arrays, so its first

element is multi[0], which is an array of four type intvariables (one of the two such

arrays contained in multi).

Now, if multi[0]is also an array, does it point to anything? Yes, indeed! multi[0]

points to its first element,multi[0][0]. You might wonder why multi[0]is a pointer.

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