JavaScript Challenge 1: Simple Pig Latin

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In this article we will solve together the Simple Pig Latin challenge from CodeWars, you can find it at this link.

Let's read the task together:

Move the first letter of each word to the end of it, then add "ay" to the end of the word. Leave punctuation marks untouched

The first example given to us is this one

pigIt('Pig latin is cool'); // igPay atinlay siay oolcay

Alright, after reading it one time we can already see different ways of solving this problem:

• Using RegEx to remove the first character after space and to add ay at the end of each word
• Splitting the string in an array and iterating over each portion

RegEx can be very powerful and allow you to do a lot in very little but they can also get very hard to read for your others and also for yourself going back to a project after several times.

Let's go with the more basic approach of using JavaScript to iterate over the string and perform our modifications.

First, let's split our string into an array:

const arr = str.split(" ");

Next, we want to iterate over the array, removing the first character and appending it at the end, followed by ay.

arr.map((word) => {
    return `${word.substr(1)}${word.substr(0,1)}ay`
})

Here we are iterating over the strings with map and at each iteration, we remove the first character with substr(1) which will return us a substring from character 1 to the end of the string, then we add the first letter and finally we append ay at the end of it.

The only problem with this implementation is that it will not skip characters such as !,? etc...
Let's use a very simple RegEx to determine if our character is a letter.

We can implement a simple check like the following:

word.match(/[A-z]/i)

This will ensure that only characters from a-z will be taken into account

Now let's put everything together:

function pigIt(str) {
    const arr = str.split(' ');
    return arr.map((word) => {
        return word.match(/[A-z]/i) ?
            `${word.substr(1)}${word.substr(0,1)}ay` : word
    }).join(' ');
}

There you have it, a simple functions that will:

• iterate over each word in a string
• remove the first letter of said string and add it at the end of it
• append ay at the end of each word

If you liked this type of content, please let me know in the comments and I'll create more of these.

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Comments

[L. Arman Özak]

Or this:

const pigIt = str => str.replace(/(\w)(\w+)/g, '$2$1ay');

[Samuele Zanca]

You can do a very similar thing with array methods and rest operator:

function pig(sentence){
  return sentence
          .split(' ')
          .map(([f, ...rest]) => rest.join('') + f + 'ay')
          .join(' ')
}

[AlbertoM]

Yeah with RegEx you can do it very easily but I feel like it makes the code less readable.

[pentacular]

You might find it's simpler if you rearrange it slightly. :)

const latinifyWord = (word) =>
  word.match(/[A-z]/i)
    ? `${word.substr(1)}${word.substr(0,1)}ay`
    : word;

const pigIt = (str) =>
  str.split(' ').map(latinifyWord).join(' ');

[AlbertoM]

Yep, that also works :)

[WildH0g]

Is it just me or does your RegEx not work? I mean what you have is this:

/[A-z]/i

And it's basically saying does my word have at least one letter in it? So it if you have a semicolon attached to the end of your word, it will not be ignored. I think what you meant was someting like this:

/^[A-z]+$/i

That is if you wanted to ignore words with characters altogether.

Although what I thought when I read the task was that you were meant to rearrange the letters and keep the punctuation marks at the end, if any.

[AlbertoM]

Uhm, I think what the task meant with leave the punctuation marks untouched was in the case of them being alone, so if you have ! you don't want to end up with !ay. My solution would transform hello! to ello!hay which may be wrong, you are right. They should have had stricter tests and a better description on CodeWars lol, they have no test case for a punctuation mark attached to a string.

[buggy1887]

Great explanation, thanks.

[AlbertoM]

Thanks, i'm happy you liked it

[Jagadish K.]

Please note .. this is not the complete rules for PigLatin ..

• For words that begin with consonant sounds, the consonant before the initial vowel should be moved to the end of the word sequence and "ay" affixed. E.g "pig" = "igpay"
• For words that begin with consonant clusters, the clusters should be moved to the end of the word sequence and "ay" affixed. E.g "glove" = "oveglay"
• For words that begin with vowel sounds, simply add "way" to the end of the word. E.g "explain" = "explainway”

Have a look at scotch.io/courses/the-ultimate-gui...

[AlbertoM]

Yes, i've taken it from CodeWars, that's why it's called 'Simple Pig Latin', it's a simpler version.

[touibeg mohamed]

thank you i liked...

[Al]

This is awesome! Keep 'em coming!

[AlbertoM]

Thanks!, I will