Three dimensional arrays of integers in C++

Question

I would like to find out safe ways of implementing three dimensional arrays of integers in C++, using pointer arithmetic / dynamic memory allocation, or, alternatively using

Answer 1

There are many advantages to using the STL to manage your memory over using new/delete. The choice of how to represent your data depends on how you plan to use it. One suggestion would be a class that hides the implementation decision and provides three dimensional get/set methods to a one dimensional STL vector.

If you really believe you need to create a custom 3d vector type, investigate Boost first.

// a class that does something in 3 dimensions

class MySimpleClass
{
public:

  MySimpleClass(const size_t inWidth, const size_t inHeight, const size_t inDepth) :
   mWidth(inWidth), mHeight(inHeight), mDepth(inDepth)
   {
       mArray.resize(mWidth * mHeight * mDepth);
   }


  // inline for speed
  int Get(const size_t inX, const size_t inY, const size_t inZ) {
     return mArray[(inZ * mWidth * mHeight) + (mY * mWidth) + mX];
  }

  void Set(const size_t inX, const size_t inY, const size_t inZ, const int inVal) {
     return mArray[(inZ * mWidth * mHeight) + (mY * mWidth) + mX];
  }

  // doing something uniform with the data is easier if it's not a vector of vectors
  void DoSomething()
  {
     std::transform(mArray.begin(), mArray.end(), mArray.begin(), MyUnaryFunc);
  }

private:

  // dimensions of data
  size_t mWidth;
  size_t mHeight;
  size_t mDepth;

  // data buffer
  std::vector< int > mArray;
};