Ask about char in array

names is an array of two elements, each element is in turn an array of five elements.

And you use each array like you would any other. So the firs element of names is names[0], the second is names[1]. Then the first element of names[0] is names[0][0], the second names[0][1], etc.

Also, because each element of names is an array, and each of those two arrays are initialized as null-terminated strings, you can use names[0] and names[1] like any other string.

A multidimensional array is an array elements of which are in turn arrays.

Let's consider your declaration

char names[2][5] = {"john","boy"};

You can introduce a type alias like

typedef char T[5];

so the name T is an alias for the type char[5].

Now your initial declaration may be rewritten like

T names[2] = {"john","boy"};

That is you have an array of two elements which of them is in turn an array of the type char[5].

String literals are also have types of character arrays. For example the string literal "John" can be represented like

char john[5] = { 'J', 'o', 'h', 'n', '\0' };

elements of a string literal are used to initialize a corresponding character array.

So you array is initialized like

char names[2][5] = { { 'J', 'o', 'h', 'n', '\0' }, { 'b', 'o', 'y', '\0', '\0' } };

If a string literal contains less elements than the number of elements of the initialized array then all other elements of the array that have no an explicit initializer will be zero-initialized.

Consider a table of 2 * 5, where you get 2 rows, each of 5 columns. Here 2 dimensional array contains 2 rows i.e 2 char*. Each row is of size 5

Outputs:

names[0][0] = 'j'
names[1][0] = 'b'
name[0] = "john"
name[1] = "boy"

char names[2][5] = {"john","boy"};

names is a multi-dimensional char array with the height of 2 and the width 5:

 __________________________________________________________________
│    j      │    o       │    h       │    n        │     \0       │  // 5 char elements, 1.dimension
│names[0][0]│ names[0][1]│ names[0][2]│ names[0][3] │ names[0][4]  │              
│___________│____________│____________│_____________│______________│      
│    b      │    o       │    y       │    \0       │     \0       │  // 5 char elements, 2.dimension
│names[1][0]│ names[1][1]│ names[1][2]│ names[1][3] │ names[1][4]  │              
│___________│____________│____________│_____________│______________│

Sorry, for the simple example but this might help you.