Generating star pattern in LUA - lua

Question

I am new to programming in LUA. And I am not able to solve this question below.
Given a number N, generate a star pattern such that on the first line there are N stars and on the subsequent lines the number of stars decreases by 1.
The pattern generated should have N rows. In every row, every fifth star (*) is replaced with a hash (#). Every row should have the required number of stars (*) and hash (#) symbols.
Sample input and output, where the first line is the number of test cases
This is what I tried.. And I am not able to move further
function generatePattern()
n = tonumber(io.read())
i = n
while(i >= 1)
do
j = 1
while(j<=i)
do
if(j<=i)
then
if(j%5 == 0)
then
print("#");
else
print("*");
end
print(" ");
end
j = j+1;
end
print("\n");
i = i-1;
end
end
tc = tonumber(io.read())
for i=1,tc
do
generatePattern()
end

Answer 1

First, just the stars without hashes. This part is easy:
local function pattern(n)
for i=n,1,-1 do
print(string.rep("*", i))
end
end
To replace each 5th asterisk with a hash, you can extend the expression with the following substitution:
local function pattern(n)
for i=n,1,-1 do
print((string.rep("*", i):gsub("(%*%*%*%*)%*", "%1#")))
end
end
The asterisks in the pattern need to be escaped with a %, since * holds special meaning within Lua patterns.
Note that string.gsub returns 2 values, but they can be truncated to one value by adding an extra set of parentheses, leading to the somewhat awkward-looking form print((..)).

Answer 2

Depending on Lua version the metamethod __index holding rep for repeats...
--- Lua 5.3
n=10
asterisk='*'
print(asterisk:rep(n))
-- puts out: **********

Answer 3

#! /usr/bin/env lua
for n = arg[1], 1, -1 do
local char = ''
while #char < n do
if #char %5 == 4 then char = char ..'#'
else char = char ..'*'
end -- mod 5
end -- #char
print( char )
end -- arg[1]
chmod +x asterisk.lua
./asterisk.lua 15

Answer 4

Please do not follow this answer since it is bad coding style! I would delete it but SO won't let me. See comment and other answers for better solutions.
My Lua print adds newlines to each printout, therefore I concatenate each character in a string and print the concatenated string out afterwards.
function generatePattern()
n = tonumber(io.read())
i = n
while(i >= 1)
do
ouput = ""
j = 1
while(j<=i)
do
if(j%5 == 0)
then
ouput=ouput .. "#";
else
ouput=ouput .. "*";
end
j = j+1;
end
print(ouput);
i = i-1;
end
end
Also this code is just yours minimal transformed to give the correct output. There are plenty of different ways to solve the task, some are faster or more intuitive than others.