Creating dynamic 2D array c++

Question

From what I know, declaring a dynamic array is:

int *array = new int[x];

My question is, how can I declare a dynamic 2D array?

For example:

int *array = new int[constant][dynamic];

And from what I found out is the number of rows can't be dynamic. Are there any ways to do it?

Answer 1

One easy technique that I use in these kind of situations is that I create a struct for storing the 1D array, and create an array of those 1D arrays.

struct BaseArray {
    BaseArray() = default;
    BaseArray(int count) : pArray(new int[count]) {}
    ~BaseArray() { delete[] pArray; }
    int* pArray = nullptr;
};


int main()
{
    BaseArray* pArray = new BaseArray[constant]{dynamic};
}

Now the other simple way is to use std::vector . It'll look something like this,

std::vector<std::vector<int>> array(constant, std::vector<int>(dynamic));

I recommend using std::vector as its more feature complete and takes a lot of burden off of your shoulder.