What is the quickest way to determine if two elements are in the same row or column in a 2D array?

As part of one of my programs, I’m trying to check if two elements in a 2D array are part of the same row or column. I know there might be many ways to go about this, mainly with loops and by iterating through the array, but I was just wondering: is there any quick way to determine this?

Let’s say I have a 2D array that looks like {{1, 2}, {3, 4}, {5, 6}}. Would there be any fast way to determine that 1 and 2 belong to the same row? Almost in a way that it could be evaluated in an if statement as “if item x belongs to the same row as item y, then do so and so”? If not, then what would be the quickest way otherwise?

Answer

Here’s one approach for rows.

int[][] v = {{1, 2}, {3, 4}, {5, 6}};
System.out.println(rowContains(v, 2, 3));
System.out.println(rowContains(v, 5, 6));

Prints

false
true

The method

• stream single d array and ignore duplicates
• count filter on finding the values.
• return true if any final count is 2.

public static boolean rowContains(int[][] v, int v1, int v2) {
    return Arrays.stream(v)
            .map(arrs -> Arrays.stream(arrs)
                    .distinct().filter(a -> a == v1 || a == v2)
                    .count()).anyMatch(a -> a == 2);
}

For columns, the easiest way would be to write a method to transpose the columns and rows and re-run the method.