Is there a more concise way to initialize empty multidimensional arrays?

Question

I\'ve been trying to find a reasonably concise way to set the dimensions of an empty multidimensional JavaScript array, but with no success so far.

First, I tried to

Answer 1

A more succinct version of @chris code:

function multiDim (dims, leaf) {
  dims = Array.isArray (dims) ? dims.slice () : [dims];
  return Array.apply (null, Array (dims.shift ())).map (function (v, i) {
    return dims.length 
      ? multiDim (dims, typeof leaf == 'string' ? leaf.replace ('%i', i + ' %i') : leaf)
      : typeof leaf == 'string' ? leaf.replace ('%i', i) : leaf;
  });      
}

console.log (JSON.stringify (multiDim ([2,2], "hi %i"), null, '  ')); 

Produces :

[
  [
    "hi 0 0",
    "hi 0 1"
  ],
  [
    "hi 1 0",
    "hi 1 1"
  ]
]

In this version you can pass the first argument as a number for single dimension array. Including %i in the leaf value will provide index values in the leaf values.

Play with it at : http://jsfiddle.net/jstoolsmith/r3eMR/