Multi-dimensional arrays in C Sharp (C#) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Multi-dimensional Arrays in C#

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are organizing seats in a small movie theater. The theater has rows and columns of seats. You want to keep track of which seats are taken and which are free.

🎯 Goal: You will create a multi-dimensional array to represent the seats, mark some seats as taken, and then print the seating arrangement.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a 2D array called seats with 3 rows and 4 columns

Use string values: "Free" or "Taken" to mark seats

Mark specific seats as taken using row and column indexes

Print the seating arrangement row by row

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Multi-dimensional arrays are useful to represent grids, tables, or layouts like seating charts, game boards, or pixel maps.

💼 Career

Understanding multi-dimensional arrays helps in software development tasks involving data organization, UI layouts, and simulations.

1

Create a 3x4 multi-dimensional array

Create a 2D string array called seats with 3 rows and 4 columns. Initialize all seats with the value "Free".

C Sharp (C#)

// Create a 3x4 string array called seats and set all values to "Free"
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use string[,] seats = new string[3, 4] and initialize each row with 4 "Free" strings.

2

Mark some seats as taken

Change the seat at row 0, column 1 and the seat at row 2, column 3 to "Taken".

C Sharp (C#)

string[,] seats = new string[3, 4]
{
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"}
};
// Mark seats at row 0, column 1 and row 2, column 3 as "Taken"
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the syntax seats[row, column] = "Taken"; to mark seats.

3

Loop through the seats to prepare output

Use nested for loops with variables row and col to go through each seat in seats. Inside the inner loop, build a string called rowSeats that joins seat statuses separated by spaces for each row.

C Sharp (C#)

string[,] seats = new string[3, 4]
{
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"}
};
seats[0, 1] = "Taken";
seats[2, 3] = "Taken";

// Use nested for loops with row and col to build rowSeats string for each row
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use seats.GetLength(0) for rows and seats.GetLength(1) for columns. Add each seat to rowSeats with a space.

4

Print the seating arrangement

Run the program to print the seating arrangement showing which seats are "Free" and which are "Taken".

C Sharp (C#)

string[,] seats = new string[3, 4]
{
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"},
    {"Free", "Free", "Free", "Free"}
};
seats[0, 1] = "Taken";
seats[2, 3] = "Taken";

for (int row = 0; row < seats.GetLength(0); row++)
{
    string rowSeats = "";
    for (int col = 0; col < seats.GetLength(1); col++)
    {
        rowSeats += seats[row, col] + " ";
    }
    Console.WriteLine(rowSeats.Trim());
}
// Run the program to see the output

Need a hint?

Run the program and check the console output matches the seating arrangement.