I was in codewars this morning and there is this Kata asking for a function to reverse a string passed as parameter through recursion method.
The best solution listed for this problem was this.
function reverse(str) {
return str.length > 1 ? reverse(str.slice(1)) + str[0] : str;
}
I researched for this all this morning and I still don't know what is happening here:
+ str[0]
Can somebody please clarify this for me?
The essence of the function is the following:
This results in the following logic, the (recursive) function calls indicated by brackets:
(A B C D E)
((B C D E) A)
(((C D E) B) A)
((((D E) C) B) A)
(((((E) D) C) B) A)
str.slice(1) "chops off" the first letter of the string and returns the rest of it. So 'abcd'.slice(1) gives you 'bcd'.
str[0] is the first letter of the string. 'abcd'[0] is 'a'.
So, str.slice(1) + str[0] is taking the first letter of the string and "moving" it to the end: 'abcd' becomes 'bcda'.
This does not address the recursive nature of the solution, but it answers your question about + str[0].
I'll try to rewrite the function in a more "human-readable" way
reverse = str => {
// If there is still string to reverse
if (str.length > 1) {
let firstChar = str[0]
let strWithoutFirstChar = str.slice(1)
// Notice only a part of the string 'comes back' here
// console.log(strWithoutFirstChar) // Might help
return reverse(strWithoutFirstChar) + firstChar
}
// Else return result as is
else {
return str
}
}
This is the same function, but without ternaries and declaring well named variables.
If you uncomment the console.log() line and call:
reverse('help');
The output should be:
elp
lp
p
'pleh'
Hope it helps!
The + operator is a concatenator for string. You can instead use concat this :
var reverse = str => str.length > 1 ? reverse(str.slice(1)).concat(str[0]) : str;
console.log(reverse("123456789")); // 987654321
