Finding the length of a row of a non-uniform 2D array

[BlueOctopus]

Hi forum,

I have a non-uniform two dimensional array and I want to find the number of elements in a certain row.

Let's say that my array is the one below, and I want to find the length of the third row(so the number of columns).

int array[3][4] = {
        {"1", "2", "3"},
        {"4", "5", "6", "7"},
        {"8"},
    };

Any help is really appreciated

[lastchance]

I'm not actually sure you can do this. Your array declaration allows for 4 columns, irrespective of whether you set them or not.

Are you sure that you couldn't use a 1-d array of vectors? - then you can just use the size() member function to find the number of elements in each vector (i.e. the number of "columns").

[BlueOctopus]

OK so the full context:

I am making a small role-playing game. All the name of the monsters are saved in a 2D array. Each row contains the monsters for each level, since he can't 'fight' the same monsters at level 1 and 100. The monster that he is going to fight is a random element of the row of his level. So if the character is level 4, he will fight a random monster from the fourth row. I wanted to know the length of the row to limit the range of the random number.

Are you sure that you couldn't use a 1-d array of vectors?

Maybe if I store all the elements in a 1D array I can randomly pick one and then if it doesn't meet some requirements(character level is smaller than monster level), another random number is chosen.

Thanks for your help.

[lastchance]

If you prefer to keep the multi-dimensional array you could also "mark" the effective end of a row with a number that has no other use (-1 perhaps). This is a bit like the null-terminator used to signify the end of Cstrings.

[keskiverto]

Note, the element-type of your example array is int, but you (attempt to) initialize them with string literals.

lastchance did mean this kind of "1D array of vectors":

std::vector<int> array[] = {
        {1, 2, 3},
        {4, 5, 6, 7},
        {8}
    };

int level = 2;
std::cout << "Level " << level+1 << " has " << array[level].size() << " monsters\n";