Printing a singular array from within a 2D array in C#

March 25, 2024

I am writing code that entends to print out the first singular array as a whole from within a 2D array.

string[,] customerNames = new string [2,2] {{ "Bob", "Smith" },
                                            { "Sally", "Smith" }};
Console.WriteLine($"[{string.Join(", ",customerNames.GetValue(0)}]");

Expected output:

[Bob, Smith]

Current actual output:

Error: Specified file could not be executed.
Array was not a one-dimensional array.

The first element of the array is a one-dimensional array, however it is extracted from a larger 2D-array.

Is it possible to print out an array like this?

>Solution :

With multi-dimensional arrays, you’ll have to index the items individually to enumerate over a single rank/column. Get the number of the columns using GetLength(1) and get those values.

var rank = 0;
var customer = Enumerable.Range(0, customerNames.GetLength(1))
    .Select(j => customerNames[rank, j]); // or customerNames.GetValue(rank, j)
Console.WriteLine($"[{string.Join(", ", customer)}]");