CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++multidimensional-array
Dani
Dani

Reputation: 1

Efficiant multidimensional data storage in C++

I'm trying to write a C++ program that needs to store and adjust data in a 3D array. The size is given by the user and doesn't change throughout the run, and I don't need to perform any complicated matrix operations on it. I just need it to be optimized to set and get from given 3D coordinates (I do quite some iterations over all the members, and it's a big array). What's the best way to go about defining that array? Vector of vector of vector? Arrays of vectors? CvMat/IplImage with multi channels? Should I even keep it as 3D or just turn it into one very long interleaved vector and calculate indexes accordingly?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 885

Answers (2)

casablanca
casablanca

Reputation: 70701

I would go with your last option, a single large array with transformed indices. If all you want to do is read and write known indices, this is probably the most efficient structure, both in terms of storage and speed. You can also wrap this in a class and overload operator () to make it easy to access 3D coordinates, for eg. you could write a(1,2,3) = 10; and the overloaded operator could take care transforming the 3D coordinates into a linear index. Iterating over such an array would also be quite simple since there's only one dimension.

Upvotes: 2

mrtim
mrtim

Reputation: 31

It depends on what you mean by efficient, but have you looked at KD Trees?

Upvotes: 0

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