c# - Does Array.Copy work with multidimensional arrays?

Question

This code works fine:

var newArray = new Rectangle[newHeight, newWidth];

for (int x = 0; x < newWidth; x++)
    for (int y = 0; y < newHeight; y++)
        newArray[y, x] = (x >= width) || (y >= height) ? Rectangle.Empty : tiles[y, x];

But I am not having much luck replacing it with Array.Copy. Basically, if the resized array is larger it just adds blank rectangles to the edges. If it is smaller then it should just cut off the edges.

When doing this:

Array.Copy(tiles, newArray, newWidth * newHeight);

It messes up the array and all of its contents become disordered and do not retain their original index. Maybe I'm just having a brainfart or something?

Answer 1

Yes. However, it doesn't work the way you are thinking it works. Rather, it thinks of each mutlidimensional array as a single-dimensional array (which is actually what they are in memory, it's just a trick that lets us place some structure on top of them to think of them as multidimensional) and then copies the single-dimensional structures. So if you have

1 2 3
4 5 6

and want to copy it into

x x x x
x x x x

then it will think of the first array as

1 2 3 4 5 6

and the second as

x x x x x x x x

and the result will be

1 2 3 4 5 6 x x

which will appear to you as

1 2 3 4
5 6 x x

Got it?