You should look into associative arrays ( http://dlang.org/hash-map .) Example: import std.stdio; void main() { int[][string] mybobs; mybobs["bob_1"] = [-1, -1, 1, -1, -1]; mybobs["bob_2"] = [-1, 1, 1, 1, -1]; mybobs["bob_3"] = [-1, 1, 1, 1, -1]; writeln(mybobs); }