multidimensional array setting/slicing?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

"Rakan Alhneiti" wrote
> Saaa wrote:
>> Is there a easy way to set/read a multidimensional slice of an array?
>>
>> I'd like to do something like this... :)
>>
>> int array[][];
>> array.length=100;
>> array[].length=200; :  Error: slice expression array[] is not a 
>> modifiable lvalue
>>
>> int array2[][];
>> array2.length=4;
>> array2[].length=2;
>> array2=[[1,2,3,4],[5,6,7,8]];
>>
>> array[10..10+array2.length][150..150+array2[].length]=array2;
> I dont think you can do this in any programming language not just D.
> Initialization of inner arrays in multidimensional arrays is done most of 
> the type using loops
> int array[][];
> array.length = 100;
> for(int i = 0;i<array.length;i++)
> {
> array[i].length = 4;
> }

Probably done easiest with a foreach loop:

foreach(ref a; array)
    a.length = 4;

The slicing is somthing that would have to be done using loops.

you might not realize, but a multi-dimensional dynamic array is really an 
array of pointers, not one contiguous block of memory.  So each sub-array 
points to a different memory space, and could have different lengths.

a loop with foreach would look something like:

foreach(i, ref a; array[10..10+array2.length])
    a[] = array2[i];

Probably other ways to do it.

-Steve