Question

I would like to know how, if possible, to create a n amount of arrays of the same size. Help would be greatly appreciated. For example: I want to create 10 arrays with the same amount of elements without having to create them one by one: int[] a = new int[]. Hope this is more clear now.

One of my questions in one of the comments was +- “how do I sort the array row for row / column for column”. I figured it out – maybe someone may find it useful.

int[] sortarr = new int[5]; //create array to transfer data from row to new array

for (int i=0; i<N; i++){
    for (int j=0; j<5; j++){
    sortarr[j] = hands[i][j]; //transfer the data from 2D array's row to sortarr
    }
    Arrays.sort(sortarr); //sort the row's data

    for (int x=0; x<5; x++){ 
    hands[i][x] = sortarr[x]; //transfer the data back to 2D array
    }

}

Maybe it’s pretty obvious, but I hope this will help someone out there.

Answer 1

You need to create a 2D array.

int n;
int size;
int[][] arr = new int[size][n];

You can fill the array with a nested for loop;

for(int i =0;i < arr.length; i++) {
    for(int j = 0; i < arr[i].length; j++) {
        arr[i][j] = someValue;
    }
}

Or you could populate the arrays like so:

int[][] arr2 = new int[n][];
for(int i = 0; i < n; i++){
    arr2[i] = new int[size];
}

You can think of a 2D array as an array of arrays, for example:

private Card[][] allPlayerHands;
public Card[] getHand(int playerNumber) {
    return allPlayerHands[playerNumber];
}

Here is a good Stack Overflow question about 2D arrays:

Initialising a multidimensional array in Java