CODEWITHSUNDEEP
arraysruby
Parnab Sanyal
Parnab Sanyal

Reputation: 739

How to change value of an element in two dimensional array in ruby?

I have created a two dimensional array and the whole 2D array is populated with 9 like this.

matrix = Array.new(5,(Array.new(5,9)))

Next I am printing the whole array

puts "#{matrix}" # => [[9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9]]

Next I am assigning 1 to the [0][0] position.

matrix[0][0] = 1

Then I am again printing the matrix

puts "#{matrix}" # => [[1, 9, 9, 9, 9], [1, 9, 9, 9, 9], [1, 9, 9, 9, 9], [1, 9, 9, 9, 9], [1, 9, 9, 9, 9]]

So, here is the case! Why every row is being affected by this assignment. Shouldn't it only change the value of [0][0] position. I am using ruby 2.3.0p0 (2015-12-25 revision 53290) [x86_64-linux].

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1735

Answers (2)

Martin
Martin

Reputation: 7714

The problem is that you are not creating 5 different arrays:

matrix = Array.new(5,(Array.new(5,9)))

this code is creating a new array which is then used five times. So, when you set the cell of the first array to 0, you actually set them all to 0.

To fix this, you need to create individual array, for example this way:

matrix = []

5.times do 
  matrix.push(Array.new(5,9))
end

Then the code will work the way you expect:

   matrix[0][0] = 5
   puts matrix #  [[5, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9], [9, 9, 9, 9, 9]]

Upvotes: 1

Ursus
Ursus

Reputation: 30056

Basically, you are using the same array reference for every subarray. Do it like this

matrix = Array.new(5) { Array.new(5, 9) }

Upvotes: 7

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