Python Star Patterns: A Fun Way to Practice Your Coding Skills

The Python star pattern challenge is a popular task often assigned to new programming students. To complete the challenge, developers must demonstrate competency with variables, ranges, and nested loops. It’s a fun and effective way to teach and reinforce programming fundamentals.

A Python star pattern example.

Printing Any Star Pattern in Python

To print out any star pattern in Python, follow these steps:

Count the number of rows in the star pattern of interest. Create a for loop where the range is the number of rows. Find the relationship between the number of stars on a row and the row index. Create an inner loop that prints stars based on this relationship.

Star Triangle Pattern in Python

For example, with a right-angle triangle, the number of stars on any given row is equal to the row you’re on. Here’s the code for that:

for i in range(0,10):
    for j in range(0, i+1):
        print("*", end='')
    print()

By reversing the count on the outer loop, you can flip the triangle vertically. Padding the output of the inner loop flips it horizontally.

A Python star triangle pattern.

Square and Rectangle Python Star Patterns

Squares and rectangles are probably the best place to start when learning how to print Python star patterns.

For squares, the number of stars on each row is equal to the number of rows.

For rectangles, the inner and outer loops have hardcoded row and column ranges.

# A 5x5 Python square star pattern
for i in range(0,5):
    for j in range(0, 5):
        print("*", end='')
    print()

# A 4x3 Python rectangle star pattern
for i in range(0,4):
    for j in range(0,3):
        print("*", end='')
    print()

A Python star square pattern.

After mastering how to print square, rectangle, and triangle star patterns, you’ll realize that complex shapes such as arrows, diamonds, and tetrahedrons are simply creative combinations of the former.

The Future of Software Development

Did you know that revolutionizing the AI and machine learning space? Mojo is a superset of Python, so Mojo can execute any code written in Python. However, Mojo is close to 70,000 times faster than Python, and it can be used throughout the AI stack.