Is it me or has this question come up a thousand times in the past week, and every time people give the same answer and everytime I''m forced to contradict them.

Don''t allocate "multidimensional arrays" in the manner that these people claim. Instead, allocate all of the elements in one strip (instead of each element being a pointer to some other place in memory that''s allocated separately).

IE, for a 5 x 4 dimensional array, allocate an array of 20 elements, then, when you refer to elements multiple the row you want to access by the number of colums and add the row you want to access to get the element in the array that you need.

So:

char* Array;
Array = new char[20]; // 5 x 4
//To access the 3rd row 2nd colum do
Array[ 3 * 4 + 2 ];

This is how multidimensional arrays are allocated and accessed internally when you''re not dynamically allocating them, it''s just hidden from you.

Doing it the other way (array of pointers) forces a longer construction, a longer destruction, memory fragmentation, different pointer arithmetic from non-dynamically allocated arrays, and even more code.

If you don''t like having to access data like that, then just encapsulate everything into a class and overload operator() to do it for you.