[CaptainMorgan]

You didn't really explain the specifics of the triangle, so this first example here is a left aligned triangle. I formatted it my way since you didn't properly format the post - please use code tags when posting code. There's many ways to do it... and I fancy for loops in case you didn't notice.


Replace your two while loops with either of the below snippets of code:

Code:

  ...
    for (i = 0; i < stars; i++) {
      for (j = 0; j <= i; j++) {
        System.out.print("*");
      }
      System.out.println();
    }
  ...

Since your square was hollow, here's a hollow triangle - also left aligned:

Code:

  ...
    for (i = 0; i <= stars; i++) {
      for (j = 0; j <= i; j++) {        
        if (i == stars) {
          for (int x = 0; x<= stars; x++)
            System.out.print("*");
          break;
        } else if (i > 1) {
          System.out.print("*");                    
          for (int k = 0; k < i - 1; k++)
            System.out.print(" ");
          System.out.print("*");      
          break;                               
        } else 
          System.out.print("*");
      }      
      System.out.println();
    }
  ...