Creating an hourglass using asterisks

Question

I would like to create an hourglass using the \"*\" character. For example if the user input was 5 then it would look like this:

*****
 ***
  *
 ***
*****
         


        

Answer 1

A complete solution in Java

public static void draw(int w){
    draw(w, 0);
}

public static void draw(int W, int s){
    stars(W, s);
    if (W > 2) {
        draw(W-2, s+1);
        stars(W, s);
    }
}
public static void stars(int n, int s){
    if(s > 0){
        System.out.print(" ");
        stars(n, s-1);
    } else  if (n > 0){
        System.out.print("*");
        stars(n-1, s);
    } else {
        System.out.println();
    }
}

the parameter s was introduced to keep track of the number of spaces needed to center the asterisks Another way to do this would be have some global parameter to keep track of the total width and do subtraction but you seem to really like recursion.

This code

for(int i = 1; i < 7; i++){
    System.out.println("An hourglass of width " + i);
    draw(i);
    System.out.println();
}

Will now output this

An hourglass of width 1
*

An hourglass of width 2
**

An hourglass of width 3
***
 *
***

An hourglass of width 4
****
 **
****

An hourglass of width 5
*****
 ***
  *
 ***
*****

An hourglass of width 6
******
 ****
  **
 ****
******