Printing patterns

[Lindley]

printf("%c         %c\n", '*', '*');

While this will work, substituting literals is really not necessary here:

printf("*         *\n");

will do the same thing.

The instructor referred to it as a C++ class anyway.

Well, to be blunt, there are a lot of instructors who claim to be teaching C++, who are actually teaching "C with a few bits of C++ syntax thrown in". That isn't the way professional programmers write C++, but it is unfortunately very common in schools. The reason for this is that C makes it easier to teach the underlying data structures and algorithms than proper C++, because proper C++ does a lot of the low-level stuff for you. It's important to learn those low-level ideas, but you should also become familiar with the "right" way of doing things, because it's both easier and safer.