Question

Write a program that reads a string and then prints a diamond shaped array based on the characters
of the string. As an example, if the string has the value “SAMPLE”, then the program should print
the pattern:
S
SAS
SAMAS
SAMPMAS
SAMPLPMAS
SAMPLELPMAS
SAMPLPMAS
SAMPMAS
SAMAS
SAS
S
The program should work for a string up to ten characters long. If a user supplies a string that is
longer than ten characters, the program should use only the first ten characters in forming the
pattern.

Answer 1

I need to the characters from the string to form a diamond shape (the shape is a little off above) and I think this may involve an approach with nested for loops, but not so sure how to get the program to take the first 10 and return it that way (ex; taking into account the spacing and everything

Answer 2

Deal with it as two separate problems, which they are. One function to return the munged string, and another to deal with positioning that string.

Answer 3

This is a fun project -- opens the way to cool designs;

Answer 4

some art;

Answer 5

Anyway-- I approached the problem by first observing the format of:
```
S
SAS
SAMAS
SAMPMAS
SAMPLPMAS
SAMPLELPMAS
SAMPLPMAS
SAMPMAS
SAMAS
SAS
S
```

I then divided the program into 2 main strings arrays -- the forwards portion, and the backwards portion -- (observe the backwards portion doesn't play a role in the first or last lines), using for loops and the String class's substring method, you should be able to get the 2 forward/backward arrays-- ie;
```
forwards[4]; //this holds the string "SAMPL";
```

Answer 6

```
backwards[4]; //this holds the string "PMAS"
```
then, you can concatenate the forwards / backwards arrays in a for loop into a new string array called finalDisplay -- (you can use the String class's concat method) ie;
```
String str1 = "Hello";
String str2 = " World";
String show = str1.concat(str2);
System.out.print(show); //prints "hello world"
```

As for the actual printing into a diamond format -- I used the StringBuilder class -- and made a StringBuilder array holding the same values as the String array finalDisplay --

In my spacing algorithm -- the number of lines away from the center the line is, is the number of spaces you add before it -- I do this using the StringBuilder class's insert method-- ie;
```
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("Hello");
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
sb.insert(0, " ");
System.out.print(sb.toString()); //prints out 10 spaces before Hello
```

Note the toString() method is needed to turn a StringBuilder into a String.