Lab 4.3 - Pyramid

The science of Mathematics is very old, almost older than recorded history. Ancient Egyptians used it to build gigantic, perfectly aligned pyramids out of massive stone blocks. It shouldn't be too difficult to build one of your own.

Write an application that will display a pyramid out of any single character the user gives, with as many rows as the user specifies (up to 12).

Your program should have:
• a Label to display the pyramid
• a couple more Labels to give the user some directions
• a TextBox for the character to be used in the pyramid
• a TextBox for the number of rows in the pyramid
• a Button to actually draw the pyramid
• a CheckBox (remember those?) called "Inverted"

When the Draw button is clicked, your program should first check to make sure that the user has offered exactly one character, and has specified a number of rows as a numeric value between 1 and 12, inclusive. If not, the user should be given a MsgBox that explains his or her error, and then the program should return to the form without displaying a pyramid. Otherwise, the program should then display a pyramid, thus:

*
**
***
****
*****
******
*******
********
*********

Note that the number of characters (in this case, an asterisk) starts at one and increases by one each row.

If the Inverted Check Box is checked, the pyramid should be drawn upside-down.

Common mistakes include:
• Trying to write the program on the fly rather than writing down an algorithm in pseudocode in your notebook.
• No, really: plan this one out ahead of time in your notebook.
• Not checking that the row input is numeric.
• Not checking that the character entered is only one character in length.
• Using global scope when you should be using local scope.
• Not leaving enough space to display the full result.
• Wasting real estate, leaving junk code, or cutting off the title of the program.

HINTS: You'll want to use a loop, actually two nested loops, to create the pyramid. Use the concatenation operator to add to your result string. Remember that your entire pyramid is going to be a single string. When you invert, don't forget to watch your Step (get it?). Use a monospace font (such as Courier).