Thank you so much for helping me out with this! It took me a while to grasp what you were trying to tell me, but it finally just clicked. Part of the issue was that I assumed that for it to go down, I'd need both variables to follow the x-- format, but I get it now.

I've written out a few bits of code for the second part, but I still keep getting a single line of stars. Should I be looking at more nested loops to put in, or would that be making this too complicated?

for(int c = number; c <= 50; c--){
	for (int d = c; d < c; d--) {

for (int c = number; number <= c; number--){
	for (int d = 0; d < c; d--) {

for (int c = (number - 1); (number -1) <= c; number--){
	for (int d = 0; d < c; c--) {

@jon.kiparsky
Thank you, I missed that off zero equation.

jon.kiparsky, on 29 October 2012 - 07:32 AM, said:

Thank you for the reply. I see where you're going with this, and I've put together a few bits of code. However, that forces the stars to straighten out instead of form a triangle.

if (number <= 50)
				for(int a = 1; a <= number; a++){
					for (int b = 0; b < a; b++) {
						System.out.print("*");
	 	}
					for(int c = number; c <= number - 1; c--){
						for (int d = 0; d > c; c--){
							System.out.print("*");
					}
					System.out.println();

I see what you mean. I changed it to

  char[] type = {'C', 'c', 'f', 'F'}; 

but now receive errors for my codes

 
if (type == 'C', 'c')
if (type == 'F', 'f') 

I get the messages
"Incompatible operand types char[] and int" and "Syntax error on token ",", * expected" respectively for both if codes.

I apologize that I'm not coming across well. New DIR