Question

In C, is there any built-in array slicing mechanism?

Like in Matlab for example,
A(1:4)

would produce =

 1     1     1     1

How can I achieve this in C?

I tried looking, but the closest I could find is this: http://cboard.cprogramming.com/c-programming/95772-how-do-array-subsets.html

subsetArray = &bigArray[someIndex]

But this does not exactly return the sliced array, instead pointer to the first element of the sliced array…

Many thanks

Answer 1

Thanks everyone for pointing out that there is no such built-in mechanism in C.

I tried using what @Afonso Tsukamoto suggested but I realized I needed a solution for multi-dimensional array. So I ended up writing my own function. I will put it in here in case anyone else is looking for similar answer:

void GetSlicedMultiArray4Col(int A[][4], int mrow, int mcol, int B[1][4], int sliced_mrow)
{
    int row, col;
    sliced_mrow = sliced_mrow - 1; //cause in C, index starts from 0
    for(row=0; row < mrow; row++)
    {
        for (col=0; col < mcol; col++)
        {
            if (row==sliced_mrow) B[0][col]=A[row][col];
        }
    }
}

So A is my input (original array) and B is my output (the sliced array).
I call the function like this:

GetSlicedMultiArray4Col(A, A_rows, A_cols, B, target_row);

For example:

int A[][4] = {{1,2,3,4},{1,1,1,1},{3,3,3,3}};
int A_rows = 3; 
int A_cols = 4; 
int B[1][4]; //my subset
int target_row = 1;

GetSlicedMultiArray4Col(A, A_rows, A_cols, B, target_row);

This will produce a result (multidimensional array B[1][4]) that in Matlab is equal to the result of A(target_row,1:4).

I am new to C so please correct me if I’m wrong or if this code can be made better… thanks again 🙂