Importing a large lookup table

Thot:
I am still baffled by the fact that in the declaration "1" means 1 total and in the assignment "1" means the second item: 0 - 1.

You declare the number you want. eg.

int foo [2];

You get an array of two. However they are zero-relative. So you index into 0, 1.

Thanks also for the PROGMEM tip and for the link! I can do it so long as the program does not need to modify it, correct?

Yes.

Finally, can I put the code in a function at the end of the sketch and call it from setup(), maybe by stating somehow it's a global array or, being it a variable assignment must it go before setup() (that would make the sketch neater) ?

The assignments would take instructions. It seems much simpler to pre-assign the array (ie. declare the contents, don't assign them). Then it would need to be globally defined (or at least, static inside a function).

As the second numbers are not bigger than a byte I could create two monodimensional arrays, one int and one byte for a total of 100 * (2 + 1) = 300 bytes (plus some overhead, I assume).

You could do that, but if you keep them in program memory you have 32 Kb to play with, so you aren't running out yet.