dynamic allocation/deallocation of 2D & 3D arrays

Question

I know about algorithms to allocate/deallocate a 2D array dynamically, however I\'m not too sure about the same for 3D arrays.
Using this knowledge and a bit of symmetry

Answer 1

This is a version of the idea in the question but using only one malloc, inspired by the other answers. It allows intuitive use of the square brackets and easy cleaning. I hope it does not make any compiler implementation specific assumption.

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int **array, i, j;
  array = allocate2d(3, 4);
  for (i = 0; i < 3; i++)
  {
    for (j = 0; j < 4; j++)
    {
      array[i][j] = j + i + 1;
    }
  }
  for (i = 0; i < 3; i++)
  {
    for (j = 0; j < 4; j++)
    {
      printf("array[%d][%d] = %d\n", i, j, array[i][j]);
    }
  }
  free(array);
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

int **allocate2d(int x, int y)
{
  int i;
  int **array = malloc(sizeof(int *) * x + sizeof(int) * x * y);
  for (i = 0; i < x; i++)
  {
    array[i] = ((int *)(array + x)) + y * i;
  }
  return array;
}