adding values from a text file to 2 dimensional int array

It's almost a Json:

_{(source: json.org)}

From this we know that the final structure of your string must be like :

[
  [ 0,0,0,1,0,0,0 ],
  [ 0,0,0,1,1,0,0 ]
]

So with simple replace, and using Json.net to deserialize the json:

var inputs =
@"{ 0,0,0,1,0,0,0 },
{ 0,0,0,1,1,0,0 }";

var jsoned = String.Format("[{0}]", inputs.Replace('{', '[').Replace('}', ']'));
var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<int[,]>(jsoned);

You would need code to:

1. Split that input into rows.
2. Split each row into cells, fields or seperate values
3. Put those values into an array

Step 1+2 can be done with REGEX, I asume. It those curly brackets were not there, any CSV parsing code might also be able to handle it.

Step 3 will propably require parsing. You generally do not want to use strings or char in your code. This looks like ints, so parse them into ints and work with those.

As for the backend array: If you do not know how many lines there will be - or even how many fields per line - you have to use List or another advanced collection instead. And for those you can only use the jagged style, afaik.

Using Split, Trim and Select you can easly have a List<int[]>.

var inputs =
@"{ 0,0,0,1,0,0,0 },
{ 0,0,0,1,1,0,0 },";

var lines = inputs.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);

var dim =
    lines.Select(
        line =>
        line.Trim(new[] {'{', '}', ','})
            .Split(new[] { ',' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
            .Select(element => int.Parse(element))
            .ToArray()
    ).ToList();

Then you can use Jon's answer to How to convert list of arrays into a multidimensional array

static T[,] CreateRectangularArray<T>(IList<T[]> arrays)
{
    // TODO: Validation and special-casing for arrays.Count == 0
    int minorLength = arrays[0].Length;
    T[,] ret = new T[arrays.Count, minorLength];
    for (int i = 0; i < arrays.Count; i++)
    {
        var array = arrays[i];
        if (array.Length != minorLength)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException
                ("All arrays must be the same length");
        }
        for (int j = 0; j < minorLength; j++)
        {
            ret[i, j] = array[j];
        }
    }
    return ret;
}