Looping in a spiral

Question

A friend was in need of an algorithm that would let him loop through the elements of an NxM matrix (N and M are odd). I came up with a solution, but I wanted to see if my fe

Answer 1

I love python's generators.

def spiral(N, M):
    x,y = 0,0   
    dx, dy = 0, -1

    for dumb in xrange(N*M):
        if abs(x) == abs(y) and [dx,dy] != [1,0] or x>0 and y == 1-x:  
            dx, dy = -dy, dx            # corner, change direction

        if abs(x)>N/2 or abs(y)>M/2:    # non-square
            dx, dy = -dy, dx            # change direction
            x, y = -y+dx, x+dy          # jump

        yield x, y
        x, y = x+dx, y+dy

Testing with:

print 'Spiral 3x3:'
for a,b in spiral(3,3):
    print (a,b),

print '\n\nSpiral 5x3:'
for a,b in spiral(5,3):
    print (a,b),

You get:

Spiral 3x3:
(0, 0) (1, 0) (1, 1) (0, 1) (-1, 1) (-1, 0) (-1, -1) (0, -1) (1, -1) 

Spiral 5x3:
(0, 0) (1, 0) (1, 1) (0, 1) (-1, 1) (-1, 0) (-1, -1) (0, -1) (1, -1) (2, -1) (2, 0) (2, 1) (-2, 1) (-2, 0) (-2, -1)