what is the best Data Structure to hold 'grid' information?

[prideaux69]

What is the best memory data structure to hold a grid ? By grid i mean a rectangular table with rows and columns, where the entries are not single values, but can hold any information.

Example: an availability "calendar", where i want to show room types as row headers (variable number), and dates as column headers (fixed, limited to 2 weeks at a time); and the intersection being all information about the particular cell (e.g. booked, available, guest names, etc).

Thanks for any pointers.

[pm_kirkham]

A 2D array of some structure holding the data for each 'cell' (are you booking a prison?) will probably do. Quite what that structure is, and whether anything different is required to hold the data grid, can't be answered with the info provided.

[prideaux69]

A 2D array of some structure holding the data for each 'cell' (are you booking a prison?) will probably do

Ok. i was trying to avoid arrays if something better was available. For example, similar to a Dictionary in C#, where given a typed-key, return a typed-value; problem is dictionary is 1- dimensional, i wish there was a 'two-dimensional' dictionary. Then i could use roomtype for dimension 1 (instead of meaningless integer), weekday for dimension 2 (instead of meaninless integer) and get the cell-object.

Anyway thanks for your response.

[laserlight]

For example, similar to a Dictionary in C#, where given a typed-key, return a typed-value; problem is dictionary is 1- dimensional, i wish there was a 'two-dimensional' dictionary. Then i could use roomtype for dimension 1 (instead of meaningless integer), weekday for dimension 2 (instead of meaninless integer) and get the cell-object.

You could use an ordered pair of values for the key.

[JohnW@Wessex]

Then i could use roomtype for dimension 1 (instead of meaningless integer), weekday for dimension 2 (instead of meaninless integer) and get the cell-object.

Sounds just like a database to me. SQLLite?

[ProgramThis]

If you want to perform two lookups like that instead of having "meaningless" (you could use an enum so they aren't so "meaningless") int's you can always use a HashMap of HashMaps lol.

The first key value will be the room lookup. This will return a HashMap that holds all of the weekday for the lookup in that HashMap that will return the value for that day.

Just a thought, but if you use an enum, you can use arrays in the same exact way and the "meaningless" ints would be hidden.

enum WEEKDAYS {Sunday, Monday... };
Sunday = 0
Monday = 1
...

And you access your array by using array[WEEKDAYS.Sunday]. It's still an array, easy fast lookup for known indexes, and you don't have "meaningless" ints.