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PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

Not Understanding What a Multi-Dimensional Array is or What it does.

To me, what Alena typed as an example of a multi-dimensional array looks like a normal array with string associations inside it. I don't understand what makes it "multi-dimensional" in nature. Thanks for clarifying!

4 Answers

Ken Stone
Ken Stone
29,703 Points

Try to think of it as rows and columns in a table. $array[row][col]

Also it could be considered an array of arrays.

A one dimensional array is probably what you learned first $array[index]

A two or multidimensional array is an array of one dimensional arrays.

@Ken Stone Ah ok, so a 3 dimensional array would be like the x, y, and z coordinates on a graph then?

Hi everybody, if you guys have some basic knowledge in HTML then the best way to understand Multi-Dimensional Arrays would be to think of them as an <ol> or <ul> that consists of list items <li> and a list item can be another list that consists other list items within it, ad infinitum.

A multi-dimensional array is basically an array that holds as it's elements associative arrays when each array has a numeric index. So $myList[0] will bring the first associative array as the first element of the outside array.

Hope this helps someone. :)