[Solved] How to create a two dimensional array and add values to it? [closed]

Question

Python does not have arrays like in C, unless you install the Numpy library (which I recommend if you are trying to work mathematical and numerical processing problems). Numpy is not necessary to solve this problem.
If you want a 2D array you can use nested lists: each row is a list, like this:

    board = [[10, 12, 5, 7, ...], [24, 3, 7, 8, ...] ... ]

Then you can index the numbers as board[0][3], which would be a 7 (first row, fourth element). You can find a lot more about this in the Python tutorial.
For that particular problem you probably don’t even need a two dimensional array. You know the dimension of the board so you can get away with a linear array (e.g. all rows flattened in a 400 element array). Then just by adding you can index in any direction; adding +1/-1 will get the adjacent elements (same row), adding +20/-20 will get the next/previous row elements; adding 21 will move diagonally, etc.
You need to pay some attention to borders: one thing that is not well specified in the problem formulation is what happens at the borders, i.e. do you wrap up or simply stop? Probably the latter.

Accepted Answer

Python does not have arrays like in C, unless you install the Numpy library (which I recommend if you are trying to work mathematical and numerical processing problems). Numpy is not necessary to solve this problem.
If you want a 2D array you can use nested lists: each row is a list, like this:

    board = [[10, 12, 5, 7, ...], [24, 3, 7, 8, ...] ... ]

Then you can index the numbers as board[0][3], which would be a 7 (first row, fourth element). You can find a lot more about this in the Python tutorial.
For that particular problem you probably don’t even need a two dimensional array. You know the dimension of the board so you can get away with a linear array (e.g. all rows flattened in a 400 element array). Then just by adding you can index in any direction; adding +1/-1 will get the adjacent elements (same row), adding +20/-20 will get the next/previous row elements; adding 21 will move diagonally, etc.
You need to pay some attention to borders: one thing that is not well specified in the problem formulation is what happens at the borders, i.e. do you wrap up or simply stop? Probably the latter.