# Slice Arrays of Arrays

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390
**Category:** New to Julia
**Created:** [June 18, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390 "2019-06-18T08:07:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Mikel\_Antonana](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mikel_antonana/32/3095_2.png) [@Mikel\_Antonana](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Mikel_Antonana)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390/1 "2019-06-18T08:07:28Z")

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I have an array of arrays:  
a=Array[[1,2,3,4],[11,12,13,14],[21,22,23,24]]

How can I get second and third element of each array?  
[[2,3],[12,13],[22,23]]

I have tried it but it does not work:  
a[:,2:3]

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### Author: ![baggepinnen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/baggepinnen/32/693_2.png) [@baggepinnen](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/baggepinnen)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2019, 9:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390/2 "2019-06-18T09:04:21Z")

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`getindex.(a,2)` gets the second element of each array  
You can also do `reduce(hcat, a)[2:3,:]`, but that copies all the data into a matrix before extracting the relevant rows

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### Author: ![mcabbott](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mcabbott/32/6603_2.png) [@mcabbott](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mcabbott)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2019, 9:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390/3 "2019-06-18T09:44:15Z")

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Here are two ways to do this:

```julia
reduce(hcat, getindex.(a, Ref(2:3)) )
getindex.(a, (2:3)')

```

`Ref(2:3)` means that this behaves like a scalar as far as broadcasting is concerned. Transposing it instead means that the 2nd axis of the result comes from `2:3`, and the first from `a`.

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### Author: ![baggepinnen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/baggepinnen/32/693_2.png) [@baggepinnen](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/baggepinnen)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2019, 10:34am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390/4 "2019-06-18T10:34:18Z")

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> [@mcabbott](#):
>
> getindex.(a, (2:3)')

This one is a keeper! 🙂

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### Author: ![Mikel\_Antonana](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mikel_antonana/32/3095_2.png) [@Mikel\_Antonana](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Mikel_Antonana)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2019, 10:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/slice-arrays-of-arrays/25390/5 "2019-06-20T10:33:35Z")

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Thanks to your help, I have solved my problem.  
Regards,
