Question

I have a 2 dimensional array, like so:

char[,] str = new char[2,50]; 

Now, after I’ve stored contents in both str[0] and str[1], how do I store it in a

string[] s = new string[2]; 

?

I tried

s[0] = str[0].ToString(); 

but that seems to be an error: VC# expects ‘two’ indices within the braces, which means I can convert only a character from the array. Is there a way to convert the entire str[0] to a string? Or is changing it to a jagged array the only solution?

Answer 1

A jagged array is almost always the best solution for a variety of reasons, and this is one good example. There is so much more flexibility available with an array of arrays than with a multi-dimensional array. In this case, once you have the values in an array of chars, then a constructor on the string class can be used to create a string from it.

Also, the jagged array would be composed of ‘vectors’ (i.e., a single-dimensional arrays with a zero-lower-bound index), which are much more preferment in .Net because they are given special treatment by the CLR.

So without knowing what the rest of your program is doing, that would be my recommendation.

If you do attempt to construct a string manually by looping through the array indexes, instead of using a jagged array, then I recommend using the StringBuilder class to do it.

I just banged this out, but it should be something like this:

// For the multi-dimentional array StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); for (int stringIndex = 0; stringIndex < s.Length; stringIndex++) {   sb.Clear();   for (int charIndex = 0; charIndex < str.UpperBound(1); charIndex++)     sb.Append(str[stringIndex,charIndex]);   s[stringIndex] = sb.ToString(); }  // For the jagged array for (int index = 0; index < s.Length; index++)   s[index] = new string(str[index]);