Get 1D array index from a 2D array

Question

Is there a way to get the array index of a 1D array from a 2D array?

For Eg: I have a 2D array, the array size is unknown and changes (I've used std::vector) to push_back as and when required. This works fine as long as its a 2D array but I need to get the 1D array index of this 2D array.

2D array:
Group 1 - 1, 2, 3
Group 2 - 4, 5, 6
Group 3 - 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

and so on.

So, basically is there a quick way to know that when 6 is selected from Group 2 ie Array[1][2] = 6 => I need the array index as: 1D array=> Array[5] = 6 => ie I need 5 as my answer. I have tried several things but no luck so far. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If your data is static, you can make another array in which you will store the offset for each 1D array. For your example, you will have the following array offset = {0, 3, 6} . Then you can find the index by offset[row] + col .

If you can change the row sizes, then you can store the size of each row in a Binary indexed tree and find the offset in O(log n) with a single query, where n is the amount of rows (1D vectors). However, each time you change the row size, you would have to update the structure again in O(log n).

Answer 2

If you are creating a vector of vectors (or a list of vectors), the memory locations are not guaranteed to be related. So to make it behave like a 1-dimensional array, you would need to wrap the container in your own class and overload operator[] . That operator would then need to check the index to determine the proper vector element to return. A simplified version might look like:

T& operator[](std::size_t index)
{
    std::size_t temp = index;
    if (index < myVectors[0].size())
    {
        return myVectors[0][index];
    }

    temp = index - myVectors[0].size()
    if (temp < myVectors[1].size())
    {
        return myVectors[1][temp];
    }

    // etc ...
}

You can simplify it to a loop:

T& operator[](std::size_t index)
{
    std::size_t temp = index;
    for (std::size_t i = 0; i < myVectors.size(); ++i)
    {
        if (temp < myVectors[i].size())
        {
            return myVectors[i][temp];
        }
        temp -= myVectors[i].size();
    }
    throw std::out_of_range("Array access out of bounds!");
}