Question

I was wondering what the simplest way would be to implement an array who’s rank is specified at runtime.

The example I am working on stores a array of boolean values for lattice points, and I want the user to be able to chose how many spatial dimensions the model uses at runtime.

I’ve looked at the Array.newInstance() method:

dimensionOfSpace = userInputValue;  // this value comes from GUI or whatever
int latticeLength = 5;  // square lattice for simplicity

int[] dimensions = new int[dimensionOfSpace];
for(int i = 0; i < l.length; i++) l[i] = length; 
Object lattice = Array.newInstance(boolean.class, dimensions);

But accessing these values in any sort of way seems to require horribly slow methods such as recursively using Array.get until the returned value is no longer an array, i.e. using isArray().

Am I missing an obvious solution here? I would love to be able to access the values in a way similar to foo[i][j][k].

Answer 1

Looks like what you are looking for is for some way to declare how many dimensions an array has at runtime. I don’t know how this could be done using a multidimensional ArrayList, or any multidimensional structure where you have to specify the dimensionality at compile time.

The only answer I see is to use a simple linear array wrapped in a class that converts multidimensional coordinate to and from the its position in the underlying array. This is basically how languages such as C stores multidimensional arrays by using one contiguous chunk of memory.

The code would look something like this:

import java.util.*;

class MultiArray<T>{
    private int[] dimensions;
    private Object[] array;

    public MultiArray(int ... dimensions){
        this.dimensions=dimensions;
        //Utils.product returns the product of the ints in an array
        array=new Object[Utils.product(dimensions)];
    }

    public void set(T value, int ... coords){
        int pos=computePos(coords); 
        array[pos]=value;
    }

    public T get(int ... coords){
        int pos=computePos(coords);
        return (T)(array[pos]);
    }

    private int computePos(int[] coords){
        int pos=0;
        int factor=1;
        for (int i=0;i<coords.length;i++){
            pos+=factor*coords[i];
            factor*=dimensions[i];
        }
        return pos;
    }
}

class Main{
    public static void main(String args[]){
        MultiArray<Integer> m=new MultiArray<Integer>(new int[]{5,4,3}); 
        Random r=new Random();

        for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
            for(int j=0;j<4;j++)
                for(int k=0;k<3;k++)
                    m.set(r.nextInt(),i,j,k);
        for(int i=0;i<5;i++){
            for(int j=0;j<4;j++){
                for(int k=0;k<3;k++)
                    System.out.print(m.get(i,j,k)+" ");     
                System.out.println("");
            }
            System.out.println("\n");
        }
    }
}

class Utils{
    public static int product(int...a){
        int ret=1;
        for (int x:a) ret*=x;
        return ret;
    } 
}