Based on my previous post about cloning multidimensional arrays, I have come up with a short static function to get the number of dimensions which a multidimensional array has.

Note that this method only returns the number of dimensions of the original object passed as argument. It does not expand into the contained objects themselves. Example:

Object[] a = new Object[3][0];
System.out.println(getNumberOfDimensions(a));

prints 2.

Object[] a = new Object[1];
a[0] = new float[2][5][1];
System.out.println(getNumberOfDimensions(a));

prints 1.

Here’s the code:

/** 
 * Returns the number of dimensions which a multidimensional 
 * array has as a positive integer. For example, returns 3 
 * when passed a <code>float[][][]</code> 
 * @param src the multidimensional array 
 * @return the number of dimensions of src 
 * @author Philipp Buluschek bulu@romandie.com 
 */  
public static int getNumberOfDimensions(Object[] src){  
  int dim = 1;  
  Class cl = src.getClass().getComponentType();  
  while(cl.isArray()){  
    dim++;  
    cl = cl.getComponentType(); // will not return null as we tested isArray() above  
  }  
  return dim;  
}  

java array, code, dimensions, java, multidimensional array