Writing a string in a spiral

Question

I had recently participated in coding competion sponsored by an company and there was this one question which I did not understood, as to what was it asking.

Here i

Answer 1

Size of side of square is square root of square, where square is a length in first place.

Answer:

• Take length as an integer number
• Find square root of length as float number, i.e. root
• Check if fractional part of root is non-zero
• If there is non-zero in fractional part of root, add 1 to integer part of root, else add 0
• The result is an integer number
• This number is an answer how big is each side of your square
• Instantiate an empty square, sized as calculated
• Fill the square by visiting every slot "spirally" starting from top left corner
• Assert that nothing left in source string after vistiting is complete
• Assert that remaining unfilled part of square is less that (2x side size - 1)
• Revisit the square in left-to-right, top-to-down order to reconstruct the output
• Assert that length of output is equal to length of input
• Done