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 JavaScript (ES6) iterative solution to this problem:

let spiralMatrix = (x, y, step, count) => {
    let distance = 0;
    let range = 1;
    let direction = 'up';

    for ( let i = 0; i < count; i++ ) {
        console.log('x: '+x+', y: '+y);
        distance++;
        switch ( direction ) {
            case 'up':
                y += step;
                if ( distance >= range ) {
                    direction = 'right';
                    distance = 0;
                }
                break;
            case 'right':
                x += step;
                if ( distance >= range ) {
                    direction = 'bottom';
                    distance = 0;
                    range += 1;
                }
                break;
            case 'bottom':
                y -= step;
                if ( distance >= range ) {
                    direction = 'left';
                    distance = 0;
                }
                break;
            case 'left':
                x -= step;
                if ( distance >= range ) {
                    direction = 'up';
                    distance = 0;
                    range += 1;
                }
                break;
            default:
                break;
        }
    }
}

Here's how to use it:

spiralMatrix(0, 0, 1, 100);

This will create an outward spiral, starting at coordinates (x = 0, y = 0) with step of 1 and a total number of items equals to 100. The implementation always starts the movement in the following order - up, right, bottom, left.

Please, note that this implementation creates square matrices.