Multi-Dimensional Arrays in Flash

Arrays make a great way to store and manage data in actionscript. However, sometimes just a single dimension may not be adequate for some situations such as when storing table data. Then you will need to either: define an array for each column for every row, or just make a one two-dimensional array.

A two-dimensional array can be thought of an array nested in an array. To instantiate an array, we can either do:

var arr1:Array = new Array(1, 2, 3);
var arr2:Array = new Array(4, 5, 6);
var arr3:Array = new Array(7, 8, 9);
var arr:Array = new Array(arr1, arr2, arr3);

Or the quicker way:

var arr:Array = new Array([1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]);

All we're doing here is defining arrays inside of an array. To reference a two-dimensional array is practically the same as a normal array except for we have a second element to reference. This means we just need to add another "[n-1]:"

// Output: 6
trace(arr[1][2]);

To add a new element to the first array, we can use the same syntax as we would with a single-dimension array, but we would be pushing an array data type:

// Adds another element to the outer array
arr.push(arr1);

To add an element to one of our existing arrays, we reference the array's element in the outer array:

// Ads a sub element to arr1[1] (= 4,5,6)
arr[1].push(arr1);

The rest of the functions in the Array package are used in the same way, but with different references to the caller.