Access a 1D array as a 2D array in C++

Question

This has bothered me for a while. A lot of times I find myself making a large buffer to hold a \"maximum\" amount of data. This helps me avoid dynamically allocating and dea

Answer 1

Once you only know the length of your array at runtime, I guess it is better to solve this problem not using an 2D array, but emulating it by using functions. For example, in C:

char data1D[1000] = {0};

unsigned int getElement(unsigned int x, unsigned int y, 
            unsigned int xMax, unsigned int yMax)
{
  // Do some error tests
  return ((unsigned int *) data1D)[x*xMax + y];
}