DEV Community

dev.to staff
dev.to staff

Posted on

Daily Challenge #122 - Clockwise Spirals

Your objective is to complete a function createSpiral(N) that receives an integer N and returns an NxN two-dimensional array with numbers 1 through NxN represented as a clockwise spiral.

Return an empty array if N < 1 or N is not int / number

Examples:

N = 3 Output: [[1,2,3],[8,9,4],[7,6,5]]

1 2 3

8 9 4

7 6 5

N = 4 Output: [[1,2,3,4],[12,13,14,5],[11,16,15,6],[10,9,8,7]]

1 2 3 4
12 13 14 5
11 16 15 6
10 9 8 7

N = 5 Output: [[1,2,3,4,5],[16,17,18,19,6],[15,24,25,20,7],[14,23,22,21,8],[13,12,11,10,9]]

1 2 3 4 5

16 17 18 19 6

15 24 25 20 7

14 23 22 21 8

13 12 11 10 9


This challenge comes from alex.budiakov on CodeWars. Thank you to CodeWars, who has licensed redistribution of this challenge under the 2-Clause BSD License!

Want to propose a challenge idea for a future post? Email yo+challenge@dev.to with your suggestions!

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
idanarye profile image
Idan Arye • Edited

Rust:

fn create_spiral(diameter: usize) -> Vec<Vec<usize>> {
    let move_pos = |pos: [isize; 2], direction: [isize; 2]| [
        pos[0] + direction[0],
        pos[1] + direction[1],
    ];

    let mut result = vec![vec![0; diameter]; diameter];
    let mut pos = [0, 0];
    let directions = [
        [1, 0],
        [0, 1],
        [-1, 0],
        [0, -1]
    ];

    let mut direction = 0;
    for i in 1..=diameter.pow(2) {
        result[pos[1] as usize][pos[0] as usize] = i;
        let new_pos = move_pos(pos, directions[direction]);
        let should_turn =
            new_pos[0] < 0 || new_pos[1] < 0 ||
            diameter <= new_pos[0] as usize || diameter <= new_pos[1] as usize ||
            result[new_pos[1] as usize][new_pos[0] as usize] != 0;
        if should_turn {
            direction = (direction + 1) % directions.len();
            pos = move_pos(pos, directions[direction]);
        } else {
            pos = new_pos;
        }
    }
    result
}

fn main() {
    for row in create_spiral(10) {
        for cell in row {
            print!("{:4}", cell);
        }
        println!();
    }
}