Only compiles as an array of pointers, not array of arrays

Question

Suppose I define two arrays, each of which have 2 elements (for theoretical purposes):

char const *arr1[] = { "i", "j" };
char const *arr2[] = { "m", "n" };

Is there a way to define a multidimensional array that contains these two arrays as elements? I was thinking of something like the following, but my compiler displays warnings about incompatible types:

char const *combine[][2] = { arr1, arr2 };

The only way it would compile was to make the compiler treat the arrays as pointers:

char const *const *combine[] = { arr1, arr2 };

Is that really the only way to do it or can I preserve the type somehow (in C++, the runtime type information would know it is an array) and treat combine as a multidimensional array? I realise it works because an array name is a const pointer, but I'm just wondering if there is a way to do what I'm asking in standard C/C++ rather than relying on compiler extensions. Perhaps I've gotten a bit too used to Python's lists where I could just throw anything in them...

Answer 1

No. First, this

char const *combine[][2] = { arr1, arr2 };

cannot work, because arr1 and arr2 cannot be used to initialize an array. But this:

char const *arr1[] = { "i", "j" };
char const *arr2[] = { "m", "n" };

char const *(*combine[])[2] = { &arr1, &arr2 };

works as well as this

char const *arr1[] = { "i", "j" };
char const *arr2[] = { "m", "n" };

char const *combine[][2] = { {"i", "j"}, {"m", "n"} };