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Bruce Axtens
Bruce Axtens

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How to pre-dimension a 2D array in JavaScript

I learned how to pre-fill/pre-dimension a 2D array! It was part of an Exercism challenge.

I had tried things like

var a = Array(3).fill(Array(2).fill(0))
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but when you do something like

a[0][1] = "dog";
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you get an array that looks like

[[0,"dog"], [0,"dog"], [0,"dog"]]
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So what one has to do is to Array(3).fill(0) and then .map the array to another Array(2).fill(0) as per the following fragment from my Exercism solution:

rotate(array) {
    const [rowMax, colMax] = [array.length, array[0].length];
    const result = Array(colMax)
      .fill(0)
      .map(() => Array(rowMax).fill(0));
    for (let col = 0; col < rowMax; col++) {
      for (let row = 0; row < colMax; row++) {
        result[row][col] = array[col][row];
      }
    }
    return result;
  }
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specifically the

Array(colMax)
      .fill(0)
      .map(() => Array(rowMax).fill(0));
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part

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