There is no special for
statement for scanning a
“multidimensional” array. There cannot be one, because, in truth, there
are no multidimensional arrays or elements—there is only a
multidimensional way of accessing an array.
However, if your program has an array that is always accessed as
multidimensional, you can get the effect of scanning it by combining
the scanning for
statement
(see Scanning an Array) with the
built-in split
function
(see String Functions).
It works in the following manner:
for (combined in array) { split(combined, separate, SUBSEP) ... }
This sets the variable combined
to
each concatenated combined index in the array, and splits it
into the individual indices by breaking it apart where the value of
SUBSEP
appears. The individual indices then become the elements of
the array separate
.
Thus, if a value is previously stored in array[1, "foo"]
; then
an element with index "1\034foo"
exists in array
. (Recall
that the default value of SUBSEP
is the character with code 034.)
Sooner or later, the for
statement finds that index and does an
iteration with the variable combined
set to "1\034foo"
.
Then the split
function is called as follows:
split("1\034foo", separate, "\034")
The result is to set separate[1]
to "1"
and
separate[2]
to "foo"
. Presto! The original sequence of
separate indices is recovered.