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Thread: Why is this nested for loop not printing 5 spaces on the top line?

  1. #1
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    Default Why is this nested for loop not printing 5 spaces on the top line?

    My question is the comment in the following code. Thanks in advance.

    for( i=0; i<num; i++){
     
         for(j=num-i; j>1; j-- ){         // first pass of this loop should print 5 spaces? Because input (5) minus i (0) should be 5? Also if someone could explain to me why j>1. 
         System.out.print(" ");
         }
     
         for(j=0; j<=i; j++){
         System.out.print("* ");
        }
    }
     
    Console
     
    Enter height of pyramid.
    5
        *                          
       * *                        
      * * * 
     * * * * 
    * * * * *
    Last edited by FightingIrishman; December 29th, 2021 at 05:20 PM.

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    Super Moderator Norm's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why is this nested for loop not printing 5 spaces on the top line?

    Try debugging the code by having it print the value of the loop index instead of a space.

    Please edit your post and wrap your code with code tags:

    [code]
    **YOUR CODE GOES HERE**
    [/code]

    to get highlighting and preserve formatting.
    If you don't understand my answer, don't ignore it, ask a question.

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    FightingIrishman (December 31st, 2021)

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    Default Re: Why is this nested for loop not printing 5 spaces on the top line?

    If j starts at 5 and the loop condition is j>1 you'll get only 4 iterations (j = 5, 4, 3, 2)
    The condition should be j>0 (or j>=1 if you prefer).

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    FightingIrishman (December 31st, 2021)

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    Default Re: Why is this nested for loop not printing 5 spaces on the top line?

    Thanks mate. You're right, it was the "j>1" that was doing it.

    The code worked fine but I'm learning from example code so I was wondering what was making the spaces print one less than the input number.

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