Java Algorithm: Pascal’s Triangle

Pascal’s Triangle

Pascal’s triangle is a problem where you want to print a triangle of a certain height where each element is the sum of the 2 elements above it.  The first row is 1, the second row is 2 1’s, and then the pattern builds from there with 1 on the ends and the other elements being the sum of their parents.

For Example:

       1 1
      1 2 1
     1 3 3 1
    1 4 6 4 1

Generalized Solution

It’s always good to (first) try to solve algorithms yourself without looking at other peoples’ solutions so that you truly learn how to work them out yourself in real scenarios.

So, there may be a more efficient solution than this; but here was my approach:

  • Set a list to hold the previous row (initially empty).
  • Loop up to the required depth from 1 to D inclusively.
    • Loop for each item that should be in that level (level 1 has 1 number, level N has N numbers).
    • If it’s an end-number add “1” to the new row, otherwise add the sum of parents.
  • Print the new row.
  • Store the new row as the previous row so it can be used for the next depth level’s parent calculations.

I’m sure you can do this without storing the previous row as well mathematically, but this is pretty elegant and will only take extra space equal to the sizeof(int) * level-number which is really nothing.

Java Solution

package john.humphreys;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class PascalsTriangle {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

    private static void printToDepth(int d) {

        //Row 1 has value 1, anything less is invalid.
        if (d < 1) return;

        //Keep track of the previous row.
        List<Integer> previousRow = new ArrayList<>();

        //Loop from 1 to target depth inclusively.
        for (int i = 1; i <= d; ++i) {

            //Create a new row to populate with our solution.
            List<Integer> newRow = new ArrayList<>();

            //If this is a row-end (0 or max in row) add 0, otherwise add the parents' sum.
            for (int ri = 0; ri < i; ++ri) {
                newRow.add(ri == 0 || ri == i - 1 ? 1 : previousRow.get(ri - 1) + previousRow.get(ri));

            //Print out the space-separated row.
            System.out.println(" ")));

            //Store this as the previous row.
            previousRow = newRow;

If we take out comments, gratuitous spacing, and imports, it’s quite lean:

public class PascalsTriangle {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

    private static void printToDepth(int d) {
        if (d < 1) return;

            System.out.println(" ")));
            previousRow = newRow;

SCP/SSH With Different Private Key

If you need to use SSH or SCP with a different private key file, just specify it with -i.  For example, to copy logs from a remote server using a specific private key file and user, do the following:

scp -i C:\Users\[your-user]\.ssh\pk_file [user]@[ip-addr]:/path/logs/* .

This -i will work regardless of OS, but the example is SSHing to a Linux server from a Windows server assuming you store your private keys in your user .ssh directory.

Bash – Grep (or Run Other Command) Only On Files Created This Week, Day.

Use Case

I just ran into a simple problem where I had to grep files on a server, but the directory had TONS and TONS of files in it.  I just wanted to target files created within the last week or so.

Working Command

It turns out this find command is very handy for this occasion.  It was taken and lightly modified from this unix stack-exchange post after a fair bit of searching.

find . -mtime -7 -exec grep "my_search_string" {} \;

Basically, it finds everything in “.” (the current directory) that was created in the last 7 days (as in 24 hour days, not from-this-morning days), and it executes the grep expression on it.

You can modify the timing however you want with mtime as well as change the target directory or command to execute, and of course you can pipe the output to whatever you want :).

Angular 7 Material Modal


Getting modals working in Angular + Material took me a lot longer than I expected.  But I must confess that the documentation for them here -> was spot on.  You just have to actually read all of it.

I’m going to provide a shorter crash course here showing 100% of what you need code-wise.  I suggest you refer to that main link to understand everything fully though.

Requirements Summary

To get a modal working, assuming you already have Angular + Material working, you need to do the following.  This assumes you are just using the root @NgModule in app.module.js, but you can use other modules if you like.

  • import MatDialogModule at the top of your app.module.ts and it to your imports array in the same file.
  • import {MatDialog, MatDialogRef, MAT_DIALOG_DATA} and {Inject} in your current page’s .ts file.
  • Create a new HTML file for your modal at the same level as your current page.
  • Add a dialog component into your typescript file.
  • Write code to trigger your dialog to open.
  • Import your dialog component back in your app.module.js and register it as a declaration *and* as an entry component (you probably have to add entry components as they’re not there by default).
    • This is because dialogs are created on-the-fly and angular needs extra information to deal with ad-hoc components.

Detailed Code Example


Again, if you have a multi @NgModule angular app, you can still refer to this but you may put the content in other modules.

//... (normal imports left out for brevity)
import { MatDialogModule} from '@angular/material';
import { DialogOverviewExampleDialog } from "./cs-job-monitor/cs-job-monitor.component"

  declarations: [
  imports: [
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent],
  entryComponents: [
export class AppModule { }


This is just one of the pages in my angular project as generated by the angular CLI. It just happens to be called cs-job-monitor but that isn’t important to you.

import { Inject } from '@angular/core';
import {MatDialog, MatDialogRef, MAT_DIALOG_DATA} from '@angular/material';

//Your normal page component.
  selector: 'app-cs-job-monitor',
  templateUrl: './cs-job-monitor.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./cs-job-monitor.component.styl']
export class CsJobMonitorComponent {

  constructor(private http: HttpClient, public dialog: MatDialog) {
    //Normal work.

  //In my case, I am opening the modal on the "on select row" event
  //of an angular grid (ag-grid).  But this is not important, just look
  /at how it opens.
  onSelectionChanged(event: Object) {
    const dialogRef =, {
      data: event["api"].getSelectedRows()

//Here's your dialog component.  Mine is still named after the example one from
//angular's documentation page (I'll fix that!).  But it works fine.
  selector: 'dialog-overview-example-dialog',
  templateUrl: 'dialog-overview-example-dialog.html'
export class DialogOverviewExampleDialog {

    public dialogRef: MatDialogRef,
    @Inject(MAT_DIALOG_DATA) public data: DialogData) {}

  onNoClick(): void {


Here is the HTML that appears in your dialog when it pops up. For now, I just have it displaying the object you gave it as data as JSON. In this case, as it will display the selected rows from the ag-grid I was using to call onSelectionChanged(). But I’m not bothering to add that here.

  {{data | json}}

Java Regex Capture/Extract Multiple Values

Use Case




The Code

The relevant part of the code is here:

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

private static final String capturePattern =

public DbLoadLog(String line) {

    isValid = true;

    Pattern r = Pattern.compile(capturePattern);
    Matcher m = r.matcher(line);

    if (m.find()) {
        fullLogEntry = line;
        dataSetId = Integer.valueOf(;
        fileTimestamp =;
        logTimestamp =;
        status =;
    else {
        isValid = false;