Following your comment, I can see why you are confused in your attempts to use a matrix in code.
There are many types of containers in C++. Many of them you can find in the standard library (std::vector, std::list, std::set, ...), others you can create yourself or use other libraries. Plain arrays (like int a[5]) are a somewhat unique case because they come from C and are part of the language itself.
A plain array lives on the stack (not very important but you might want to read up on stack vs heap allocations), and refers to a contiguous region of memory.
If you declare some array a like int a[5], you get a region of 5 integers one after the other, and you can point to the first one by just writing a. You can access each of them using a[i] or, equivalently, *(a+i).
If you declare a like int a[5][3], you now get a region of 15 integers, but you can access them slightly differently, like a[i][j], which is equivalent to *(a+i*3+j).
The important thing to you here is that the sizes (5 and 3) must be compile-time constants, and you cannot change them at runtime.
The same is true for std::array: you could declare a like std::array<std::array<int, 3, 5> a and get a similar region of 15 integers, that you can access the same way, but with some convenience (for example you can return that type, whereas you cannot return a plain array type, only a pointer, losing the size information in the process).
My advice is not to think of these arrays as having dimensionality, but as simple containers that give you some memory to work with however you choose. You can very well declare a like std::array<int, 15> a and access elements in a 2D way by indexing like this: a[i*3+j]. Memory-wise, it's the same.
Now, if you want the ability to set the sizes at runtime, you can use std::vector in a similar way. Either you declare a like std::vector<std::vector<int>> a(5, std::vector<int>(3)) and deal with the nested vectors (that initialization creates 5 std::vector<int> of size 3 each), or you declare a as a single vector like std::vector<int> a(15) and index it like a[i*3+j]. You can even make your own class that wraps a vector and helps with the indexing.
Either way, it's rare in C++ to need a plain array, and you should generally use some kind of container, with std::vector being a good choice for a lot of things.
Here is an example of how your code would look like using vectors:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
std::vector<std::string> my_2d_array(int N, int M) {
std::vector<std::string> A(N*M);
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++) {
std::string element = std::to_string(i) + std::to_string(j);
A[i*M+j] = element;
}
}
return A;
}
int main() {
int N, M;
N = 4;
M = 3;
std::vector<std::string> A = my_2d_array(N, M);
// Print the array A
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++) {
std::cout << A[i*M+j] << " ";
}
std::cout << "\n";
}
}
And here is a very crude example of a Matrix class used to wrap the vectors:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
template<typename T>
class Matrix {
public:
Matrix(int rowCount, int columnCount) : v(rowCount*columnCount), columnCount(columnCount) {}
T& operator()(int row, int column) {
return v[row*columnCount + column];
}
private:
std::vector<T> v;
int columnCount;
};
Matrix<std::string> my_2d_array(int N, int M) {
Matrix<std::string> A(N, M);
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++) {
std::string element = std::to_string(i) + std::to_string(j);
A(i, j) = element;
}
}
return A;
}
int main() {
int N, M;
N = 4;
M = 3;
Matrix<std::string> A = my_2d_array(N, M);
// Print the array A
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++) {
std::cout << A(i, j) << " ";
}
std::cout << "\n";
}
}
std::vector.vof sizeN*Mfrom which you access an element(i, j)by doingv[i*M+j]. Whether you need a plain array, astd::array, or astd::vector, or even some other container type, depends on considerations other than multidimentionality. For example, runtime or compile-time size.std::vectorof sizeM*Nwill do fine to hold both dimensions, but if it makes things easier for your to think about you can also often usestd::vector<std::vector<>>- a vector of vectors.