A two-dimensional array can be passed to a function by specifying the number of columns in the parameter declaration. The function receives access to the array elements, while the row count can be supplied as a separate argument.

#include <stdio.h>

void displayMatrix(int rows, int matrix[][3])
{
    for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
        {
            printf("%d ", matrix[i][j]);
        }

        printf("\n");
    }
}

int main(void)
{
    int matrix[2][3] = {
        {10, 20, 30},
        {40, 50, 60}
    };

    displayMatrix(2, matrix);

    return 0;
}

Example Output #

10 20 30
40 50 60

Explanation #

The function parameter:

void displayMatrix(int rows, int matrix[][3])

specifies a two-dimensional array whose rows contain three integers. The first dimension is omitted because the function receives the row count separately.

The parameter matrix[][3] is adjusted to a pointer to an array of three integers. This preserves the row structure required for expressions such as matrix[i][j].

The nested loops access each element using its row and column indices:

printf("%d ", matrix[i][j]);

The rows argument determines how many rows are processed, while the column count is fixed at three.

Two-Dimensional Array Parameters #

The column dimension must be known to calculate the correct address for each row. In C99 and later, variable-length array parameters can be used to accept runtime column counts, subject to implementation support.