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

Here's a solution in Python 3 for printing consecutive integers in a spiral clockwise and counterclockwise.

import math

def sp(n): # spiral clockwise
    a=[[0 for x in range(n)] for y in range(n)]
    last=1
    for k in range(n//2+1):
      for j in range(k,n-k):
          a[k][j]=last
          last+=1
      for i in range(k+1,n-k):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1
      for j in range(n-k-2,k-1,-1):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1
      for i in range(n-k-2,k,-1):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1

    s=int(math.log(n*n,10))+2 # compute size of cell for printing
    form="{:"+str(s)+"}"
    for i in range(n):
        for j in range(n):
            print(form.format(a[i][j]),end="")
        print("")

sp(3)
# 1 2 3
# 8 9 4
# 7 6 5

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

def sp_cc(n): # counterclockwise
    a=[[0 for x in range(n)] for y in range(n)]
    last=1
    for k in range(n//2+1):
      for j in range(n-k-1,k-1,-1):
          a[n-k-1][j]=last
          last+=1
      for i in range(n-k-2,k-1,-1):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1
      for j in range(k+1,n-k):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1
      for i in range(k+1,n-k-1):
          a[i][j]=last
          last+=1

    s=int(math.log(n*n,10))+2 # compute size of cell for printing
    form="{:"+str(s)+"}"
    for i in range(n):
        for j in range(n):
            print(form.format(a[i][j]),end="")
        print("")

sp_cc(5)
#  9 10 11 12 13
#  8 21 22 23 14
#  7 20 25 24 15
#  6 19 18 17 16
#  5  4  3  2  1

Explanation

A spiral is made of concentric squares, for instance a 5x5 square with clockwise rotation looks like this:

 5x5        3x3      1x1

>>>>>
^   v       >>>
^   v   +   ^ v   +   >
^   v       <<<
<<<

(>>>>> means "go 5 times right" or increase column index 5 times, v means down or increase row index, etc.)

All squares are the same up to their size, I looped over the concentric squares.

For each square the code has four loops (one for each side), in each loop we increase or decrease the columns or row index. If i is the row index and j the column index then a 5x5 square can be constructed by: - incrementing j from 0 to 4 (5 times) - incrementing i from 1 to 4 (4 times) - decrementing j from 3 to 0 (4 times) - decrementing i from 3 to 1 (3 times)

For the next squares (3x3 and 1x1) we do the same but shift the initial and final indices appropriately. I used an index k for each concentric square, there are n//2 + 1 concentric squares.

Finally, some math for pretty-printing.

To print the indexes:

def spi_cc(n): # counter-clockwise
    a=[[0 for x in range(n)] for y in range(n)]
    ind=[]
    last=n*n
    for k in range(n//2+1):
      for j in range(n-k-1,k-1,-1):
          ind.append((n-k-1,j))
      for i in range(n-k-2,k-1,-1):
          ind.append((i,j))
      for j in range(k+1,n-k):
          ind.append((i,j))
      for i in range(k+1,n-k-1):
          ind.append((i,j))

    print(ind)

spi_cc(5)