From: Kerry Buckley <home@...>
Date: 2006-06-26T01:12:21+09:00
Subject: Solution: [QUIZ] pp Pascal (#84)

Having followed the discussion of this quiz, I suspect this is going  
to look a bit bloated compared to some other solutions, as I took the  
simple approach of building up the entire triangle in memory, then  
printing it out afterwards. Anyway, here it is:


#!/usr/bin/env ruby
size = ARGV[0].to_i
rows = Array.new(size)
# calculate the numbers
rows[0] = [1]
(1..size - 1).each do |n|
   rows[n] = Array.new(n)
   m = 0
   rows[n - 1].inject 0 do |prev, current|
     rows[n][m] = prev + current
     m += 1
     current
   end
   rows[n] << 1
end
# longest number will be in the middle of the bottom row
max_length = rows[size - 1][size/2 - 1].to_s.length
# pad, centre and output
padded = rows.collect do |row|
   row.inject "" do |line, element|
     line + element.to_s.center(max_length + 2)
   end
end
width = padded[size - 1].length
padded.each {|row| puts row.center(width)}


Output with 13 rows (the most that'll fit in 80 characters):


                                 1
                              1    1
                            1    2    1
                         1    3    3    1
                       1    4    6    4    1
                    1    5   10   10    5    1
                  1    6   15   20   15    6    1
               1    7   21   35   35   21    7    1
             1    8   28   56   70   56   28    8    1
          1    9   36   84   126  126  84   36    9    1
        1   10   45   120  210  252  210  120  45   10    1
     1   11   55   165  330  462  462  330  165  55   11    1
   1   12   66   220  495  792  924  792  495  220  66   12    1


That looks wrong in my mail program, but it does all line up nicely  
in a monospaced font!

Kerry