The following are some examples that you may see in an intro to programming course:
Print the elements of an nxn array...
- Spiraling in from the outside
- Spiraling out from the center
- Zig zagging from the top left corner
- Going right, then left, then right, then left(like a printer)
- Etc.
These are fairly standard to whip up. However, the end result is typically ugly. It usually comes down to a bunch of nested for loops, with if statements sewn throughout, tailored to that specific transversal pattern. Heaven forbid you need to modify that, and account for a "width of the brush" or something.
Is there a cleaner pattern for this?
I've considered using some sort of automata, with directions as states. That seems plausible. However, I was wondering if there was something else, possibly more elegant/canonical, and less homebrew. We do talk about these examples all the time, after all!
Thoughts?
