Initialize and read from a PROGMEM array of pointers to PROGMEM arrays

Question

I'm working on a project for the arduino uno for which I need multiple constant arrays of bytes. Such an array is initialized like so:

const byte charR[] PROGMEM = {
  B01111111,//top half
  B01111111,
  B01000100,
  B01000110,
  B01101111,
  B00111001,
  B00000000,
  B01111000,//bottom half
  B01111000,
  B00000000,
  B00000000,
  B01111000,
  B01111000,
  B00000000
};

This array represents the capital letter R. I read the nth byte of this array like so:

nth_byte = pgm_read_word(charR+n);

This is all fine and good so far, but now I need to take it a step further. I need to create the array message[]. I need to use message[] to read byte arrays in a certain sequence. For instance:

message[] = {
  charR,
  chare,
  charp,
  charl,
  chary,
  charspace,
  charp,
  charl,
  chare,
  chara,
  chars,
  chare
};

Each entry in message[] refers to a byte array that represents a character. Notice how multiples appear. This is kind of like a 2-D array, but I want to save progmem by only defining each character once.

How do I properly initialize message[]? Will I need to use pointers for this? How do I properly get the array size or yth byte of the xth entry in message[]?

Answer 1

const byte* const message[] PROGMEM =

to use an item, load it in RAM

strcpy_P(buffer, (byte*)pgm_read_word(&(message[i])));

source Arduino reference - PROGMEM