VB.NET 2008 Floyds Triangle Update...

[become]

Hey, I would consider myself to be new to the forum, posting wise, however i have been hovering around helping a few people out via PM and reading through certain posts which interest me :)

I study visual basic 2008 in education and i happened to fall upon Floyd's Triangle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%27s_triangle) and thought it would be an achievement if i were to alter the code shown in the following link for it to have a more appealing UI, in terms of spacing between certain characters and displaying errors messages where appropriate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_.NET (bottom of the page, roughly 7/8 down)

The reason im posting this up to so you can learn a few tips, if you are studying vb.net and i would like to share with the community a sample of code which i managed to change from wikipedia to work with vb.net 2008 rather than other variations.

You are able to freely download vb.net 2008 completely free from the microsoft web page (http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-Visual-Basic) Visual Studio 2008 Express.

Please comment below on what you think its good/effective or what needs improving on, otherwise i hope you enjoyed my contribution. Screenshots are below and code is presented below to.

NOTE: I wouldn't consider this as 100% mine as the majority of the code i found on wikipedia.org so therefore I'd just like to point out that i only did slight alterations and added in a few (not many) notes for a programmer/pseudo code user to read and hopefully understand. To be completely honest with you, im not too sure on what everything does, but i hope this inspires some to learn and look into to hopefully make clearer to others :)

 

Module Program
   Sub Main()
       Dim rows As Integer
       'Input validation.
       Do Until Integer.TryParse(ReadLine("Enter a value for how many rows to be displayed: "), rows) AndAlso rows >= 1
           If rows < 1 Then
               Console.WriteLine("Warning: You cannot have less than 1 row")
           End If
           Console.WriteLine("Allowed range is 1 and {0}", Integer.MaxValue)
           Console.ReadLine()
       Loop
       'Output of Floyd's Triangle
       Dim current = 1
       For row = 1 To rows
           For column = 1 To row
               Console.Write("{0, -2}", current & " ") 'set spacing for each displayed number
               current += 1 'set increase for each integar
           Next
           Console.ReadLine()
       Next
   End Sub

   Function ReadLine(Optional ByVal prompt As String = Nothing) As String
       If prompt IsNot Nothing Then
           Console.Write(prompt)
       End If
       Return Console.ReadLine()
   End Function
End Module

 

I have attached a comparison screenshot of both original and editied codes so you can see the editied/added pieces of code/information. Again, its not alot in comparison to whats there, but it seemed to fix a few errors i had with the original code. No, i don't think this would come in useful to most people, but it's been said you should be able to code Floyd's Triangle with a language to understand the basic comprehension and understanding of it.

Thanks for taking an interest in this post,

Many thanks,

Become.

Edited April 6, 2011 by become

[a_bertrand]

One remark, if your triangle has int.max rows... it will certainly fail (actually even before) as you well overflow the max value of a int before that much rows.

Then a simple question, why do a readline after each row? And not a readkey at the end if you want to avoid to loose the output while debugging?

[become]

True, thanks for pointing that out a_bertrand, however im still novice. If you would take a quick look at the Comparison.jpg ive attached you will see the changes i have made to the original code. However, thank you greatly for pointing that out and i shall look into readkey ect and take into account what you have given me and i shall work on it to hopefully improve it :). Thanks though, i do appreciate the feedback and support, but please remember, im still novice :).

Thanks,

Become