C++ cout stuff

[FooL]

I have this assignment for intro to prog and my instructor is *famous* for giving us assignments using things that we'd have no way of knowing about. Here's the question. (Remember, I'm not asking for the whole solution, just a "key command" or something to get me pointed in right direction.

Here's the Q: What kind of cout << do I use to get this to happen?

I need to make a shape based on user input. i.e. if the user typed in a x and a 5 the output would be like this:
x
xxx
xxxxx
xxx
x

I understand the counters, loops, if, and while statements I'll be using. Here's the problem. How do I get the prog to output varying instances of the variable "Letter". in other words, how do I get it to do 1 x then 3 x's and then 5 x's everytime I enter a new loop?

I've tried working a counter that adds 2 to itself every loop and then trying something like:
cout << Letter * counter << endl;

But I end up getting the ANSCI equivalent of the Letter times the value of counter. (So it outputs like 282 instead of XXXXX or something....)

Any help is very much appreciated!

[LagMonster]

Divide the Amount for iterations in half...Loop up to that. Then Loop back down from it.

y=iterations/2

for(x,1,y){
x++
for(dis,1,y){
dis++;
cout << string;}
cout << endl;
}
y--
for(x,y,1){
x--
for(dis,1,y){
dis++;
cout << string;}
cout << endl;
}


Try to make sense of that...

[FooL]

Thanks. I'm still new, so I had to read it like 20 times and think about it VERY slowly. But, I'm sure I know what you're getting at. Thanks. That's a lot more complicated than the route I was going. But then again, my way wasn't even getting close to working. While I'm at it, response is always slow here. Do you know of a site that is dedicated to C++ like Windrivers is to Windows?

Maybe I should post that on a new thread...?

[mattjamison]

void main(){

int counter=0;
char string[10]="x";

cout << "enter counter";
cin >> counter;

cout << "\n\nenter character";
cin >> string;

if(counter%2 == 0)
counter--;

for(int i=0; i<counter; i++){
for(int j=0; j<=i; j++){
cout << string;
}
cout << endl;
i++;
}

for(i=counter-1; i>0; i--){
for(int j=i-1; j>0; j--){
cout << string;
}
cout << endl;
i--;
}
}