Diagonal Spiral Hybrid

This program prints a spiral of numbers with alphabets on diagonals.

Problem Statement

Write a Java program that prints a 5x5 spiral of numbers with alphabets placed on diagonals.

Source Code

1 public class DiagonalSpiralHybrid {
2 public static void main(String[] args) {
3 int n = 5;
4 int[][] arr = new int[n][n];
5 int top=0, left=0, bottom=n-1, right=n-1, num=1;
6 while(top<=bottom && left<=right) {
7 for(int i=left; i<=right; i++) arr[top][i]=num++;
8 top++;
9 for(int i=top; i<=bottom; i++) arr[i][right]=num++;
10 right--;
11 for(int i=right; i>=left; i--) arr[bottom][i]=num++;
12 bottom--;
13 for(int i=bottom; i>=top; i--) arr[i][left]=num++;
14 left++;
15 }
16 for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {
17 for(int j=0; j<n; j++) {
18 if(i==j || i+j==n-1) System.out.print((char)('A'+i) + "\t");
19 else System.out.print(arr[i][j] + "\t");
20 }
21 System.out.println();
22 }
23 }
24 }

Program Output

A   2   3   4   E   
6   B   8   C   10  
11  12  C   14  15  
16  D   18  E   19  
U   21  22  23  A   

Explanation

After building the spiral of numbers, the diagonal condition i==j || i+j==n-1 replaces those cells with an alphabet based on the row index, overlaying a character-based cross on the numeric spiral.

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