Baklava in C

Baklava

in C

Welcome to the Baklava in C page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

#include "stdio.h"

int main(void)
{

    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        printf("%.*s", (10 - i), "                                 ");
        printf("%.*s", (i * 2 + 1), "******************************");
        printf("\n");
    }

    for (int i = 10; -1 < i; i--)
    {
        printf("%.*s", (10 - i), "                                 ");
        printf("%.*s", (i * 2 + 1), "******************************");
        printf("\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

Baklava in C was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• Ștefan-Iulian Alecu

This article was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm
• Stuart Irwin
• Ștefan-Iulian Alecu

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

How to Implement the Solution

Header file

#include "stdio.h"

This line includes the standard input/output library.

The program uses printf() from this library to display text on the screen. Without including stdio.h, the compiler would not know what printf() is.

Main function

int main(void)

Every C program begins execution in main.

int means the function returns an integer value. void means the function takes no arguments. Returning 0 at the end tells the operating system the program finished successfully.

Everything inside the braces of main is executed in order.

Top half of diamond

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)

This loop generates the expanding upper half of the diamond.

Anatomy of the loop

A for loop has this structure:

for (initialization; condition; update)

In this program,

int i = 0;

creates the loop variable i and starts it at 0. Then,

i < 10

is checked every iteration. As long as this condition is true, the loop keeps running.

i++

runs after each iteration and increases i by one.

As such, i ranges from 0 to 9, giving us ten rows.

Printing the leading spaces

printf ("%.*s", (10 - i), "                                 ");

This prints the padding before the stars.

Normally, we use %s to print an entire string. But %.*s lets us specify the maximum number of characters to print. As such, (10 - i) is passed as that maximum width.

At the beginning, i is 0, so ten spaces are printed. As the number of spaces decreases, the stars move toward the center.

Printing the stars

printf("%.*s", (i * 2 + 1), "******************************");

This prints the visible stars, using the same mechanism as above. We use i * 2 + 1 because every row adds two more stars than before, making the diamond expand evenly.

Moving to the next line

printf("\n");

\n is the new line character. Without this, all output would appear on the same line.

Bottom half of diamond

for (int i = 10; -1 < i; i--)

This loop creates the shrinking lower half.

The logic is almost identical to the first loop, except now i decreases by one due to i--. The number of spaces increases while the number of stars decreases, producing the lower half of the diamond.

Program termination

return 0;

This ends the program and returns control to the operating system. A return value of 0 conventionally means the program executed successfully.

How to Run the Solution

If we want to compile and run the program on a computer, we first need a C compiler installed. Common choices include GCC, Clang, and Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC).

Once a compiler is available, we can open a terminal in the same directory as the source file and compile the program.

For example, using GCC:

gcc -o baklava baklava.c
./baklava

or using Clang:

clang -o baklava baklava.c
./baklava

On Windows with the Microsoft compiler:

cl baklava.c
baklava.exe