reverse order of words
in a string : with built-in functions
[ split | reverse | join ]

Reverse a string

Write a function that takes a string and returns a new string with the words in reverse order.

The first word will become the last word, the last word will become the first word, and so on.


Example ...

Enter a string ...

"Cry over spilled milk" → original string

"milk spilled over Cry" → string with words in reversed order

The function returns a new string with the words in reversed order.

The original string is unchanged.

Strings are a sequence of zero or more characters written inside quotes used to represent text.

Strings may consist of letters, numbers, symbols, words, or sentences.

Strings are immutable, they cannot be changed.

Each character in a string has an index.

The first character will be index 0 the second character will be index 1 and so on.

There are two ways to access an individual character in a string.

charAt() method

const str1 = "abc"; string

str1.charAt(0); character at index 0 → "a"

str1.charAt(1); character at index 1 → "b"

str1.charAt(2); character at index 2 → "c"

str1.charAt(3); character at index 3 → "" index not found

Alternatively use at() or slice() methods

bracket notation []

const str2 = "abc"; string

str2[0]; character at index 0 → "a"

str2[1]; character at index 1 → "b"

str2[2]; character at index 2 → "c"

str2[3]; character at index 3 → undefined index not found


Arrays are used to store multiple values in a single variable.

Each value is called an element, and each element has a numeric position in the array, known as its index.

Arrays are zero-indexed, meaning the first element is at index 0, the second at index 1, and so on.

Arrays can contain any data type, including numbers, strings, and objects.

const arr1 = [2, 4, 6]; array

arr1[0]; element at index 0 → 2

arr1[1]; element at index 1 → 4

arr1[2]; element at index 2 → 6

arr1[3]; element at index 3 → undefined index not found


Reverse a string using ↴

split() method → splits a string into an array of substrings.

reverse() method → reverses the order of the elements in an array.

join() method → returns an array as a string.


split() method splits a string into an array of substrings based on a specified separator (delimiter). The original string is unchanged.

("") separator → string is split between each character.

(" ") separator → string is split at each space character, resulting in an array of words.

const str3 = "Hello"; → string

str3.split(""); returns ↴

["H", "e", "l", "l", "o"] → array

const str4 = "Hello World"; → string

str4.split(" "); returns ↴

["Hello", "World"] → array


reverse() method reverses the order of the elements in an array.

const arr2 = ["Hello", "World"];

arr2.reverse(); returns ↴

["World, "Hello"] → array


join() method joins all elements of an array into a single string with a specified separator between each element. The original array is unchanged.

("") separator → returns a string joined with no spaces between each character.

(" ") separator → returns string joined with a single space between each element.

const arr3 = ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o"]; array

arr3.join(""); returns ↴

"Hello" → string

const arr4 = ["Hello", "World"]; array

arr4.join(" "); returns ↴

"Hello World" → string


Chaining these 3 built-in functions together ↴

const str5 = "Hello"; → string to be reversed

str5.split("").reverse().join(""); returns ↴

"olleH" → string


Initialize a variable to hold the string to be reversed.

const string1 = "Cry over spilled milk"; → user input


Define a function reverseWords to reverse a string of words.

function reverseWords(str) {}

The function takes a string as input str and returns a new string with the words in reverse order.

Split the string str into an array of words based on spaces.

str.split(" ")

Reverse the array of words.

.reverse()

Join the reversed array back into a string with spaces in between.

.join(" ")


Call the function with ↴

reverseWords(string1);


Reverse order of words.

const string1 = "Cry over spilled milk";

function reverseWords(str) {

return str.split(" ").reverse().join(" ");

}

call function

reverseWords(string1); returns ↴

"milk spilled over Cry"


Alternative to remove spaces from both ends of the string using trim() method and a regular expression as the separator to split the string into an array of words using one or more spaces.

const string2 = " Cry over spilt milk ";

function reverseWords2(str) {

return str.trim().split(/\s+/).reverse().join(" ");

}

call function

reverseWords2(string2); returns ↴

"milk spilled over Cry"

Reverse order of words in a string