How to pass two dimensional array of an unknown size to a function

Question

I want to make class library, a function which its parameter is a matrix of unknown size, and the user will create his own matrix with his own size and pass it to this funct

Answer 1

C solution:

In C you can't omit array size (except leftmost) when passing as function parameter.

You can write: int a[]

but can't: int a[][]

just for example: int a[][20]

This constraint is here, because compiler needs to determine proper offsets for accessing array elements. However, you can make it this way:

void print_arbitrary_2D_array(void *arr, int y, int x)
{
    /* cast to 2D array type */
    double (*p_arr)[y][x] = (double (*)[y][x]) arr;

    int i, j;

    for (i = 0; i < y; ++i) {
        for (j = 0; j < x; ++j)
            printf(" %lf", (*p_arr)[i][j]);
        putchar('\n');
    }
}

double arr_1[4][3] = {
    { 3.3, 5.8, 2.3 },
    { 9.1, 3.2, 6.1 },
    { 1.2, 7.9, 9.4 },
    { 0.2, 9.5, 2.4 }
};
double arr_2[2][5] = {
    { 3.6, 1.4, 6.7, 0.1, 4.2 },
    { 8.4, 2.3, 5.9, 1.4, 8.3 }
};

print_arbitrary_2D_array(arr_1, 4, 3);
putchar('\n');
print_arbitrary_2D_array(arr_2, 2, 5);