Creating a rectangle / triangle with asterisks

Hi, i'm new to C++ and I just started my first course on it. I'm having some trouble with a program i'm supposed to make. The program would ask for width / length for rectangle, and then print the shape of the rectangle with asterisks (*), and display the area and perimeter. Heres what i have so far, but i dont know where to even start with creating the rectangle. I'm supposed to use a nested loop to create the rectangle.

int main()
{
//declare variables
int length = 0;
int width = 0;
int perimeter = 0;
double area = 0.0;

//inputs
cout << "Enter length: ";
cin >> length;
cout << "Enter width: ";
cin >> width;

//calculate area and perimeter
perimeter = (length * 2) + (width * 2);
area = length * width;

//output rectangle


//output area and perimeter
cout << "Area: " << area << endl;
cout << "Perimeter: " << perimeter << endl;



return 0;
} //end of main function

Any help would be appreciated.

okay after some work ive finally come up with this for printing the rectangle:

for (int row=0; row<length; row++) {
for (int col=0; col<width; col++) {
cout << "*";
}
cout << endl;
}

However, this prints just a full rectangle of the stars, i would like to print the rectangle, but have the center be spaces, not just asterisks.

I'm assuming i need to use if statements to do so, but can anybody help me?

Basically, except the first line and the last line, you need to begin and end with '*' else use ' '.
Pseudocode:


If you can assume at least 2x2, then you can remove all if(...) statements.

Triangles will be a good bit harder, depending on the requirements.

just come to have a look