We know that strings can be thought of as character arrays-- that is, each element in the array is a single character.
This is incorrect, and why this is a non-trivial task.
A string represents text which is formed of graphemes, which are formed by combining character sequences in unicode.
Which means that in order to reverse a textual string properly you need to identify the graphemic units which need to be reordered, separate them, and then recombine.
Which means that you can't think of a string as being an array of characters if you want to process text properly in Javascript. :)
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This is something I knew intuitively, but never thought of explicitly. Are there any resources you recommend that covers tips, tricks, gotchas for text processing in JS?
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Begin with JS data structures, then search for string related API on JavaScript. Note that JavaScript lacks static typing so sometimes you can call a method that deals with strings on a non-string data type (same with other data types and language pre-defined methods). At this point you don't know what it does in background for example when performing string split, but you can also dig deeper if you want.
Interesting and accurate, arrays and strings are clearly not the same.
I think the confusion may come because both arrays and strings share some methods and properties with the same name, and we can do some "array-like" things, like:
length concat() str[0] -- character position access ( though, the correct approach should be str.charAt() )
Also, arrays are mutable and strings aren't. so we can't do this:
str[1] = 'stuff'
Also, when using the native constructor, for instance, new String('Sup dude') each character is numerically indexed (like arrays), but in this case, even though we're using the built-in native constructor, it is not creating a string, instead, it creates an object. So, when using the string properties - length, concat, etc - JS implicitly does this boxing for us( under the hood it uses the String() native ). So we need to do str.toString() in order to get the actual string.
Thanks pentacular and Diego, these are really great points that I neglected to touch on. I'll add a bit into the tutorial and video to emphasize the distinctions.
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Those are language specific methods, in fact theoretically, strings have length while arrays have size, you can concat strings while you join arrays and string[i] breaks up on most languages for obvious reasons.
It's a comparison of whole different data structures where I don't want to involve at all (that's all already wrote about) but i feel the need to clarify this.
Also an array of chars is not the same than a string, if you want to sort, compare or change values from a string for a given output you'll need to cast it into a char array first. That's basic cryptography like Caesar's Cryptography for example.
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This is incorrect, and why this is a non-trivial task.
A string represents text which is formed of graphemes, which are formed by combining character sequences in unicode.
Which means that in order to reverse a textual string properly you need to identify the graphemic units which need to be reordered, separate them, and then recombine.
Which means that you can't think of a string as being an array of characters if you want to process text properly in Javascript. :)
This is something I knew intuitively, but never thought of explicitly. Are there any resources you recommend that covers tips, tricks, gotchas for text processing in JS?
Begin with JS data structures, then search for string related API on JavaScript. Note that JavaScript lacks static typing so sometimes you can call a method that deals with strings on a non-string data type (same with other data types and language pre-defined methods). At this point you don't know what it does in background for example when performing string split, but you can also dig deeper if you want.
Yes, absolutely!
Interesting and accurate, arrays and strings are clearly not the same.
I think the confusion may come because both arrays and strings share some methods and properties with the same name, and we can do some "array-like" things, like:
lengthconcat()str[0]-- character position access ( though, the correct approach should bestr.charAt())Also, arrays are mutable and strings aren't. so we can't do this:
str[1] = 'stuff'Also, when using the native constructor, for instance,
new String('Sup dude')each character is numerically indexed (like arrays), but in this case, even though we're using the built-in native constructor, it is not creating a string, instead, it creates an object. So, when using the string properties - length, concat, etc - JS implicitly does this boxing for us( under the hood it uses the String() native ). So we need to do str.toString() in order to get the actual string.Thanks pentacular and Diego, these are really great points that I neglected to touch on. I'll add a bit into the tutorial and video to emphasize the distinctions.
You're welcome. :)
You did a great job Jake, we're all in this endless learning process! So keep up the good work man! :-)
Appreciate the kind words!
Those are language specific methods, in fact theoretically, strings have length while arrays have size, you can concat strings while you join arrays and string[i] breaks up on most languages for obvious reasons.
It's a comparison of whole different data structures where I don't want to involve at all (that's all already wrote about) but i feel the need to clarify this.