Ok, I have an assignment for my programming class but I really don't understand what the question is asking of me. I was wondering if someone could help me understand what I'm actually supposed to do. Here is the question:

"Secion 8.2 had a code fragment in which two nested for loops initialized the array ident for use as an identity matrix. Rewrite this code, using a single pointer to step through the array one element at a time. Hint: Since we won't be using row and col index variables, it won't be easy to tell where to store 1. Instead, we can use the fact that the first element of the array should be 1, the next N elements should be 0, the next element should be 1, and so forth. Use a variable that keeps track of how many consecutive 0s have been stored; when the count reaches N, it's time to store 1."

Here is the code it refers to from section 8.2:

Code:
#define N 10

float ident [N] [N];
int row, col;

for (row = 0; row < N; row++)
   for (col = 0; col < N; col++)
      if (row == col)
         ident [row] [col] = 1.0;
      else
         ident [row] [col] = 0.0;
I don't know if any of you guys will need this but this could be some helpful information from the section 8.2:

"In mathematics, an identity matrix has 1's on the main diagonal, where the row and column index are the same, and 0's everywhere else."

Please help. I have no idea what this question is asking me to do maybe because I don't understand the idea of an "identity matrix."