Working with Multi Dimensional Arrays

In this article we will look at Multi Dimensional Arrays, Focusing on the Nontraditional Arrays.

I was trying to load a Database table with a list of Countries and their abbreviations. I was first looking at the traditional way of doing it using arrays:

                
Dim arrCountries(1,246)

arrCountries(0,0) = "US"
arrCountries(0,1) = "United States"
arrCountries(1,0) = "CA"
arrCountries(1,1) = "Canada"
.
.
.
                
            

But with 247 Countries and their abbreviations I was looking at declaring almost 500 variables in the array...something I wasn't looking forward to and I thought there had to be a better way.

I started googling the problem and everything I found was explained like the example above. I had at first thought I could do it the way it is done in the Java and C languages:

                
Dim arrCountries(1,246)

arrCountries(("US,United States"),("CA,Canada"),...,("ZM,Zambia"),("ZR,Zaire"))
                
            

That didn't work so I tried some other different ways

                
Dim arrCountries(1,246)

arrCountries("US","United States","CA","Canada",...,"ZM","Zambia","ZR","Zaire")

arrCountries(("US","United States"),("CA","Canada"),...,("ZM","Zambia"),("ZR","Zaire"))
                
            

I even tried:

                
Dim arrCountries

arrCountries = Array(("US,United States"),("CA,Canada"),...,("ZM,Zambia"),("ZR,Zaire"))

arrCountries = Array("US","United States","CA","Canada",...,"ZM","Zambia","ZR","Zaire")

arrCountries = Array(("US","United States"),("CA","Canada"),...,("ZM","Zambia"),("ZR","Zaire"))
                
            

All this did was throw a bunch of errors and after much trial and error what I found was that ASP cannot recognize a multi dimensional array in this manner, it can only see a multi dimensional array like it is shown in the first example.

When I tried to iterate through the Arrays in the traditional manner:

                
For ix = 0 to UBound(arrCountries,2)
    Response.Write "Abbr: "&arrCountries(0,ix)
    Response.Write "Country: "&arrCountries(1,ix)
Next
                
            

Only the first example worked, all the others kept giving me the 'Subscript out of range' or 'Missing ")"' or 'Type mismatch [string]' errors

So I had to look at it in 1 dimension...that is a 1 dimensional array of strings.

What I found is that if I used this example

                
Dim arrCountries

arrCountries = Array("US,United States","CA,Canada",...,"ZM,Zambia","ZR,Zaire")
                
            

and treated each element as a string I could work with it using the "split" function in this manner

                
For ix = 0 to UBound(arrCountries)
    x = split(arrCountries(ix),",")
    Response.Write "Abbr: "&x(0)
    Response.Write "Country: "&x(1)
Next
                
            

What is strange here is that the "split" function is an array function Arrays

And if I check it to see if its an array it comes up false:

                
For ix = 0 to UBound(arrCountries)
    Response.Write IsArray(arrCountries(ix))
Next
                
            

Summary:

If you have a large amount of data to work with and it is multi dimensional the best (possibly the only) way to do it is:

                
Dim arrCountries

arrCountries = Array("US,United States","CA,Canada",...,"ZM,Zambia","ZR,Zaire")

For ix = 0 to UBound(arrCountries)
    x = split(arrCountries(ix),",")
    Response.Write "Abbr: "&x(0)
    Response.Write "Country: "&x(1)
Next