Course Content
Java Basics
Java Basics
Two-Dimentional Array
Matrix? Dimension? What??
A two-dimensional array is equivalent to a matrix in mathematics. (If you're unfamiliar with matrices, don't worry; I'll explain them simply right now.) While two-dimensional arrays aren't commonly used in practical programming, it's important to understand them and the ability to create multi-dimensional arrays. A two-dimensional array is an array with two distinct indices.
To illustrate, let's examine a diagram of a two-dimensional array:
The table above serves as an example of a two-dimensional array or matrix. Let's explore how to retrieve values from this table. For instance, suppose we want to find the element at index [3][2]
.
The first index indicates the row we will examine, and the second indicates the column.
Visualizing two lines mentally can help us arrive at the result:
We draw two lines intersecting at the cell with the number 18
. This represents the value at index [3][2]
.
I hope you now have a clear understanding of how matrices work. Next, let's explore how to declare a two-dimensional array in code, and then we'll demonstrate how to populate it manually. Following that, we will conduct an index-based search to confirm our accuracy.
Main
package com.example; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { int[][] twoDimensionalArray = new int[3][3]; twoDimensionalArray[0][0] = 1; twoDimensionalArray[0][1] = 2; twoDimensionalArray[0][2] = 3; twoDimensionalArray[1][0] = 4; twoDimensionalArray[1][1] = 5; twoDimensionalArray[1][2] = 6; twoDimensionalArray[2][0] = 7; twoDimensionalArray[2][1] = 8; twoDimensionalArray[2][2] = 9; System.out.println(twoDimensionalArray[2][1]); } }
As you can see, we declared a two-dimensional array with dimensions 3 x 3. However, manually filling it proved to be quite time-consuming and challenging. You might already be contemplating how we can utilize a loop to efficiently populate the array or extract all the data from it. We will delve into that topic in the next chapter.
Everything was clear?