Question

I was always wondering if there is operator for deleting multi dimensional arrays in the standard C++ language.

If we have created a pointer to a single dimensional array

int *array = new int[size]; 

the delete looks like:

delete [] array; 

That’s great. But if we have two dimension array, we can not do

delete [][] twoDimenstionalArray; 

Instead, we should loop and delete the items, like in this example.

Can anybody explain why?

Answer 1

Technically, there aren’t two dimensional arrays in C++. What you’re using as a two dimensional array is a one dimensional array with each element being a one dimensional array. Since it doesn’t technically exist, C++ can’t delete it.