Why when working with two dimensional arrays only second dimension is important for a compiler? Just can’t get my head around that.
Thanks
Why when working with two dimensional arrays only second dimension is important for a
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Why when working with two dimensional arrays only second dimension is important for a compiler? Just can’t get my head around that.
Thanks
Because compiler needs to figure out how to access the data from memory. The first dimension is not important because compiler can count the number of items when all other sizes are given.
Examples:
compiler knows to allocate space for 4 integers. Now, with this:
compiler cannot decide whether it should be a2[1][6] or a2[2][3] or a2[3][2] or a2[6][1]. Once you tell it the second dimension, it can calculate the first one.
For example, trying to access element a2[1][0] would yield different values depending on the declaration. You could get 2, 3, 4 or even invalid position.