[python] How to access the elements of a 2D array?

I would like to understand how one goes about manipulating the elements of a 2D array.

If I have for example:

a= ( a11 a12 a13 )  and b = (b11 b12 b13) 
     a21 a22 a23             b21 b22 b23

I have defined them in python as for example:

a=[[1,1],[2,1],[3,1]]
b=[[1,2],[2,2],[3,2]]

I saw that I cannot refer to a[1][1] but to a[1] which gives me a result of [2,1]. So, I don't understand how do I access the second row of these arrays? That would be a21, a22, a23, b21, b22, b23? And how would I do in order to multiply them as c1 = a21*b21, c2 = a22*b22, etc ?

Look carefully how many brackets does your array have. I met an example when function returned answer with extra bracket, like that:

>>>approx
array([[[1192,  391]],
       [[1191,  409]],
       [[1209,  438]],
       [[1191,  409]]])

And this didn't work

>>> approx[1,1]
IndexError: index 1 is out of bounds for axis 1 with size 1

This could open the brackets:

>>> approx[:,0]
array([[1192,  391],
       [1191,  409],
       [1209,  438],
       [1191,  409]])

Now it is possible to use an ordinary element access notation:

>>> approx[:,0][1,1]
409

a[1][1] does work as expected. Do you mean a11 as the first element of the first row? Cause that would be a[0][0].

If you want do many calculation with 2d array, you should use NumPy array instead of nest list.

for your question, you can use:zip(*a) to transpose it:

In [55]: a=[[1,1],[2,1],[3,1]]
In [56]: zip(*a)
Out[56]: [(1, 2, 3), (1, 1, 1)]
In [57]: zip(*a)[0]
Out[57]: (1, 2, 3)

If you have this :

a = [[1, 1], [2, 1],[3, 1]]

You can easily access this by using :

print(a[0][2])
a[0][1] = 7
print(a)

Seems to work here:

>>> a=[[1,1],[2,1],[3,1]]
>>> a
[[1, 1], [2, 1], [3, 1]]
>>> a[1]
[2, 1]
>>> a[1][0]
2
>>> a[1][1]
1