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newbie : array initialization, anyone ?

Bjorn Pettersen pbjorn at uswest.net
Wed Dec 27 16:19:36 EST 2000 
arcege at shore.net wrote:

> Gerson Kurz <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote:
> : you can initialize a fixed-size array using something like
>
> :   array = [0] * 10
>
> : now, one would think that you can initialize a multidimensional array
> : like this:
>
> :   multidim = [ [0] * 10 ] * 3
>
> : but now, all 3 elements in multidim are references to the same single
> : array, so that if you type
>
> :   multidim[0][0] = 1
> :   print multidim
>
> : you actually get three 1 in all those 0s. Where did my thinking go
> : wrong along these lines ?
>
> This is in the FAQ (#4.50).  You will want to create each inner dimension
> individually:
>
> >>> multidim = [ None ] * 3
> >>> for i in range(3):
> ...   multidim[i] = [ 0 ] * 10
> ...
> >>>

The FAQ should probably be changed to something like:

  multidim = [ ([0] * 10) for i in range(3) ]

-- bjorn
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