Perhaps this is elementary, but I needed very large arrays of information for my program. I put all the information in a single-dimension array and then strip the parts out when needed.
Example: ser="12b*3a4*5n6*78y*9ab2nm*"
dim a(5)
h1=0
For x=1 to 5:g1=Strindexof(ser,"*",h1)
a(x)=Substring(ser,h1,g1-h1)
h1=g1+1:next x
Example: ser="12b*3a4*5n6*78y*9ab2nm*"
dim a(5)
h1=0
For x=1 to 5:g1=Strindexof(ser,"*",h1)
a(x)=Substring(ser,h1,g1-h1)
h1=g1+1:next x