Getting the array length of a 2D array in Java

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I need to get the length of a 2D array for both the row and column. I’ve successfully done this, using the following code:

public class MyClass {

 public static void main(String args[])
    {
  int[][] test; 
  test = new int[5][10];

  int row = test.length;
  int col = test[0].length;

  System.out.println(row);
  System.out.println(col);
    }
}

This prints out 5, 10 as expected.

Now take a look at this line:

  int col = test[0].length;

Notice that I actually have to reference a particular row, in order to get the column length. To me, this seems incredibly ugly. Additionally, if the array was defined as:

test = new int[0][10];

Then the code would fail when trying to get the length. Is there a different (more intelligent) way to do this?

12 Answers

It was really hard to remember that

    int numberOfColumns = arr.length;
    int numberOfRows = arr[0].length;

Let's understand why this is so and how we can figure this out when we're given an array problem. From the below code we can see that rows = 4 and columns = 3:

    int[][] arr = { {1, 1, 1, 1}, 

                    {2, 2, 2, 2}, 

                    {3, 3, 3, 3} };

arr has multiple arrays in it, and these arrays can be arranged in a vertical manner to get the number of columns. To get the number of rows, we need to access the first array and consider its length. In this case, we access [1, 1, 1, 1] and thus, the number of rows = 4. When you're given a problem where you can't see the array, you can visualize the array as a rectangle with n X m dimensions and conclude that we can get the number of rows by accessing the first array then its length. The other one (arr.length) is for the columns.

If you have this array:

String [][] example = {{{"Please!", "Thanks"}, {"Hello!", "Hey", "Hi!"}},
                       {{"Why?", "Where?", "When?", "Who?"}, {"Yes!"}}};

You can do this:

example.length;

= 2

example[0].length;

= 2

example[1].length;

= 2

example[0][1].length;

= 3

example[1][0].length;

= 4

.length = number of rows / column length

[0].length = number of columns / row length

Example Array 1:

int arr[][] = { { 1, 3, 1, 5 },
                 { 2, 2, 4, 1 },
                 { 5, 0, 2, 3 },
                 { 0, 6, 1, 2 } };

Example Array 2:

int arr[][] = { { 1, 3, 1 },
                 { 2, 2, 4 },
                 { 5, 0, 2 },
                 { 0, 6, 1 } };

Below function will work for any Symmetric and Asymmetric Array Matrix


 row_Count = arr.length
 column_Count = arr[0].length

import java.util.Arrays;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) 
    {

        double[][] test = { {100}, {200}, {300}, {400}, {500}, {600}, {700}, {800}, {900}, {1000}};

        int [][] removeRow = { {0}, {1}, {3}, {4}, };

        double[][] newTest = new double[test.length - removeRow.length][test[0].length];

        for (int i = 0, j = 0, k = 0; i < test.length; i++) {
            if (j < removeRow.length) {
                if (i == removeRow[j][0]) {
                    j++;
                    continue;
                }
            }
            newTest[k][0] = test[i][0];
            k++;
        }

        System.out.println(Arrays.deepToString(newTest));   
    }
}

With Java 8, allow you doing something more elegant like this:

int[][] foo = new int[][] {
        new int[] { 1, 2, 3 },
        new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4},
    };

int length = Arrays.stream(array).max(Comparator.comparingInt(ArrayUtils::getLength)).get().length
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