Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

7.11 Multidimensional Arrays

Multidimensional arrays with two dimensions are often used to represent tables of values with data arranged in rows and columns. To identify a particular table element, you specify two indices. By convention, the first identifies the element’s row and the second its column. Arrays that require two indices to identify each element are called two-dimensional arrays. (Multidimensional arrays can have more than two dimensions.) Java does not support multidimensional arrays directly, but it allows you to specify one-dimensional arrays whose elements are also one-dimensional arrays, thus achieving the same effect. Figure 7.16 illustrates a two-dimensional array named a with three rows and four columns (i.e., a three-by-four ...