Which comes first in a 2D array, rows or columns?

Question

When creating a 2D array, how does one remember whether rows or columns are specified first?

Answer 1

Java specifies arrays similar to that of a "row major" configuration, meaning that it indexes rows first. This is because a 2D array is an "array of arrays".

For example:

int[ ][ ] a = new int[2][4];  // Two rows and four columns.  a[0][0] a[0][1] a[0][2] a[0][3]  a[1][0] a[1][1] a[1][2] a[1][3] 

It can also be visualized more like this:

a[0] ->  [0] [1] [2] [3] a[1] ->  [0] [1] [2] [3] 

The second illustration shows the "array of arrays" aspect. The first array contains {a[0] and a[1]}, and each of those is an array containing four elements, {[0][1][2][3]}.

TL;DR summary:

Array[number of arrays][how many elements in each of those arrays] 

For more explanations, see also Arrays - 2-dimensional.