[knuckles]

I'm interested in reading a 2D data array with arbitrary dimensions m x n from a dictionary. I've seen an implementation which uses a List<List<scalar>>, and expects input in the format

listName
5 // number of rows
(

4 (1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0) // row 1
4 (1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0) // row 2...
4 (1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)
4 (1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)
4 (1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)

)

This is workable, but it doesn't naturally enforce the condition that all rows must have the same number of elements - if row 2 had an extra element, the code would accept it nonetheless. Applying this condition after-the-fact via assertions seems like a band-aid solution. I would prefer a class which naturally stores 2D data, and accepts input like

listName
5, 4 // 5 rows with 4 elements each
(

(1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0) // row 1
(1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0) // row 2...
(1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)
(1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)
(1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0)

)

Is there an OpenFOAM data type which is naturally suited to this? I looked into using a Matrix<>, but the intended usage of this class isn't clear to me and I haven't found a template to follow...