Is there a more or less easy way (without having to implement it all by myself) to access characters in a string using a 2D array-like syntax?
For example:
"This is a string\nconsisting of\nthree lines"
Where you could access (read/write) the 'f' with something like myString[1][12] - second line, 13th row.
You can use the split() function. Assume your String is assigned to variable s, then
String[] temp = s.split("\n");
That returns an array where each array element is a string on its own new line. Then you can do
temp[1].charAt(3);
To access the 3rd letter (zero-based) of the first line (zero-based).
You could do it like this:
String myString = "This is a string\nconsisting of\nthree lines";
String myStringArr[] = myString.split("\n");
char myChar = myStringArr[1].charAt(12);
To modify character at positions in a string you can use StringBuffer
StringBuffer buf = new StringBuffer("hello");
buf.insert(3, 'F');
System.out.println("" + buf.toString());
buf.deleteCharAt(3);
System.out.println("" + buf.toString());
Other than that splitting into a 2D matrix should be self implemented.
Briefly, no. Your only option is to create an object that wraps and interpolates over that string, and then provide a suitable accessor method e.g.
new Paragraph(myString).get(1,12);
Note that you can't use the indexed operator [number] for anything other than arrays.
