I am trying to solve a problem in HackerRank and I am having an issue with my submission. My code works in PyCharm but HackerRank is not accepting my submission.
Here is the problem I am trying to solve: https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/staircase
Here is my code:
def staircase(num_stairs): n = num_stairs - 1 for stairs in range(num_stairs): print ' ' * n, '#' * stairs n -= 1 print '#' * num_stairs staircase(12)
Any ideas why HackerRank is not accpeting my answer?
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Answer
Your output is incorrect; you print an empty line before the stairs that should not be there. Your range()
loop starts at 0
, so you print n
spaces and zero #
characters on the first line.
Start your range()
at 1, and n
should start at num_stairs - 2
(as Multiple arguments to print()
adds a space:
from __future__ import print_function def staircase(num_stairs): n = num_stairs - 2 for stairs in range(1, num_stairs): print(' ' * n, '#' * stairs) n -= 1 print('#' * num_stairs)
You can simplify this to one loop:
def staircase(num_stairs): for stairs in range(1, num_stairs + 1): print(' ' * (num_stairs - stairs) + '#' * stairs)
Note that I use concatenation now to combine spaces and #
characters, so that in the last iteration of the loop zero spaces are printed and num_stairs
#
characters.
Last but not least, you could use the str.rjust()
method (short for “right-justify”) to supply the spaces:
def staircase(num_stairs): for stairs in range(1, num_stairs + 1): print(('#' * stairs).rjust(num_stairs))