C++ multidimensional array member accessor

Question

I have a class that has a large 2 dimensional array in it. It used to be a dynamic array allocated on the heap and now it is statically sized which I prefer.

private:
    int fontTextureCoords_[100][7];

I had to add the type casting to the the accessor in order to return the array for access outside the class which is currently working okay, but I'm not sure it is safe or the correct way to handle this.

public:
inline int **getFontTextureCoords()
{   
    return (int**)fontTextureCoords_;
}

Is this safe / the correct way to do this or is there a more preferred method for returning a pointer to a multi-dimensional array?

Answer 1

That's not the correct way to do that and shouldn't compile. A 2d array is not convertible to a pointer to pointer. You'd have to return a pointer to an array, which is easiest to write using a typedef:

using T = int[7];
inline T* getFontTextureCoords() { return fontTextureCoords_; }

Although it'd be much better to just return a reference the full array:

using T = int[100][7];
inline T& getFontTextureCoords() { return fontTextureCoords_; }

You could also just std::array<std::array<int, 7>, 100>.