Multidimensional Array Classes

[Woody1193]

To anyone whose interested,

If you're like me, you've never actually thought about the inner workings of multidimensional arrays, even when you needed them for something. That changed today when I had to implement a 2D-Array class with the thought that the [][] function would be useful.

Of course, the first thing I did was assume that C++ would give me an error if I defined operator[] for a pointer to an object and then expected it to work recursively, so I defined four functions:
- 1 to return a pointer to a 1D-Array
- 1 to return a constant pointer to a 1D-Array
- 1 to return an object from the Array
- 1 to return a reference to an object from the Array

Now, this would work fine if C++ hadn't already defined multidimensional array operator[]'s recursively to return the object pointed to rather than an object itself. As such, I was hit with multiple errors because I over=coded it.

However, if you code your operator[] like this:

T* R::operator[](unsigned int i)
{
  return m_data[i];
}

where T is the object returned, R is the class name, and m_data is the array then it will work for however many dimensions you wish to work with.

Hope this was helpful