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A typical two-dimensional array is like a time-table. To
locate a piece of inforamtion, you determine the required
row and column and then read the location where they meet.
In the same way, a two dimensional array is a grid
containing rows and columns in which each element is
uniquely specified by means of its row and column
coordinates. Two-dimensional character arrays hold an array
of strings wherein a row represents a string and a column
represents a single character in each of the strings.
Declaration
The general form of declaration of a two-dimensional
character array is:
char arrayname[x][y];
where 'x' is the number of rows and 'y' is the number of
columns.
The following guidelines need to be followed while declaring
two-dimensional character arrays.
> The number of rows should be equal to the number of
strings in the array.
> Column specification should be greater than or equal to
the length of the longest string in the array plus one.
For example, if there are seven strings in an array and the
length of the longest string is nine, the array can be
declared in the following manner:
char cWeekdays[7][10];
Initializing Two-dimensional Arrays
The rules for initializing two-dimensional arrays are the
same as for one-dimensional arrays.
For example, to declare and initialize an array that would
hold the days of the week, the array definition would be:
char cWeekdays[7][10] = {
"Sunday",
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday",
"Saturday"
};
Manipulation
In the above example, cWeekdays[0] will refer to the string
"Sunday" and cWeekdays[4][1] would refer to the character
'h' of the string "Thursday". Consider the following
program, which accepts values into a two-dimensional
character array and displays them.
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