How should I practice Generate a Hollow Star Square?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related ZipRecruiter online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Generate a Hollow Star Square associated with ZipRecruiter?

FastPrep tags this as a ZipRecruiter online assessment coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Generate a Hollow Star Square

ZipRecruiter● EasyNEW GRADOA

Learn

Problem statement

You are given an integer n. Build an n by n hollow square as a string array.

Every border position contains *.
Every interior position contains a space character.

Return the rows from top to bottom.

Function

buildHollowSquare(n: int) → String[]

Examples

Example 1

n = 4return = ["****","*  *","*  *","****"]

The first and last rows are all border characters. Each middle row has two border stars surrounding two interior spaces.

Example 2

n = 2return = ["**","**"]

A square of side two has no interior positions, so both rows contain only stars.

Constraints

2 <= n <= 1000
The returned output contains exactly n² characters.