String - JavaScript Challenges

You can find all the code in this post in the repo Github.

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String related challenges

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Is alphanumeric

It's often used as a helper function.

• Solution 1: You can use regular expressions to match all the characters and numbers.
• Solution 2: You can just check using if statements.

/**
 * @param {any} char
 * @return {Boolean}
 */

// Solution 1
// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)
function isAlphaNumeric(char) {
  return /[A-Za-z0-9]/.test(char);
}

// Solution 2
// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)
function isAlphaNumeric(char) {
  if (
    (char >= "a" && char <= "z") ||
    (char >= "A" && char <= "Z") ||
    (char >= 0 && char <= 9)
  ) {
    return true;
  } else {
    return false;
  }
}

// Usage example
console.log(isAlphaNumeric("a")); // => true
console.log(isAlphaNumeric(0)); // => true
console.log(isAlphaNumeric("!")); // => false

---

Camel case <-> Snake case

These are the two common naming conventions for programming languages.

• For camel case to snake case, you want to replace all the upper case characters with _.
• For snake case to camel case, you want to match all the _ characters, skip it and convert the next first character to upper case.

Solution 1: use regular expressions
Solution 2: iterative approach

/* camel case to snake case */

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @return {string}
 */

// Solution 1
// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)
function toSnakeCase(str) {
  let temp = str.replace(/[A-Z]/g, function (i) {
    return "_" + i.toLowerCase();
  });

  if (temp[0] === "_") {
    temp = temp.slice(1);
  }

  return temp;
}

// Solution 2
// Time: O(n) | Space: O(1)
function toSnakeCase(str) {
  let temp = "";

  for (const char of str) {
    if (char >= "A" && char <= "Z") {
      temp += "_" + char.toLowerCase();
    } else {
      temp += char;
    }
  }

  return temp;
}

// Usage example
console.log(toSnakeCase("testMethod")); // => "test_method"

/* snake case to camel case */
/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @return {string}
 */

// Solution 1
// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)
function toCamelCase(str) {
  return str.replace(
    /([a-z])_([a-z])/gi,
    (_, left, right) => left + right.toUpperCase()
  );
}

// Solution 2
// Time: O(n) | Space: O(1)
function toSnakeCase(str) {
  let temp = "";
  const len = str.length;
  let count = 0;

  while (count < len) {
    if (str[count] === "_") {
      temp += str[count + 1].toUpperCase();
      count += 2;
    } else {
      temp += str[count];
      count += 1;
    }
  }

  return temp;
}

// Usage example
console.log(toCamelCase("test_method")); // => "testMethod"

---

Compare version numbers

It's used for semantic versioning.

The solution structure is similar to the one for big integer numbers addition.

/**
 * @param {string} version1
 * @param {string} version2
 * @return {number}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(1)
function compareVersion(version1, version2) {
  const v1Arr = version1.split(".");
  const v2Arr = version2.split(".");

  for (let i = 0; i < Math.max(v1Arr.length, v2Arr.length); i++) {
    const v1Num = Number(v1Arr[i] ?? 0);
    const v2Num = Number(v2Arr[i] ?? 0);

    if (v1Num > v2Num) {
      return 1;
    } else if (v1Num < v2Num) {
      return -1;
    }
  }

  return 0;
}

// Usage example
console.log(compareVersion("12.1.0", "12.0.9")); // => 1, meaning first one is greater
console.log(compareVersion("12.1.0", "12.1.2")); // => -1, meaning latter one is greater
console.log(compareVersion("5.0.1", "5.0.1")); // => 0, meaning they are equal.

---

Version numbers sorting

This one takes a similar approach to the last one but put the comparsion logic into the sorting function.

/**
 * @param {string[]} versions
 * @return {string[]}
 */

// Time: O(n^2logn) | Space: O(n)
function sortVersions(versionsArr) {
  versionsArr.sort((a, b) => {
    const aArr = a.split(".");
    const bArr = b.split(".");

    for (let i = 0; i < Math.max(aArr.length, bArr.length); i += 1) {
      const aItem = Number(aArr[i] ?? 0);
      const bItem = Number(bArr[i] ?? 0);

      if (aItem > bItem) {
        return 1;
      } else if (aItem < bItem) {
        return -1;
      } else {
        continue;
      }
    }

    return 0;
  });

  return versionsArr;
}

// Usage example
const sortedVersions = sortVersions([
  "0.1.1",
  "2.3.3",
  "0.302.1",
  "4.2",
  "4.3.5",
  "4.3.4.5",
]);
console.log(sortedVersions); // => [ '0.1.1', '0.302.1', '2.3.3', '4.2', '4.3.4.5', '4.3.5' ]

---

Compress a string

This solution for this challenge is used for text encoding like sparse storage which can reduce memory usage.

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @return {string}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(1)
function compress(str) {
  if (!str) {
    return "";
  }

  let compressed = "";
  let count = 1;

  for (let i = 1; i <= str.length; i += 1) {
    if (i < str.length && str[i] === str[i - 1]) {
      count += 1;
    } else {
      compressed += str[i - 1];
      if (count > 1) {
        compressed += count;
      }
      count = 1;
    }
  }

  return compressed;
}

// Usage example
console.log(compress("a")); // 'a'
console.log(compress("aa")); // 'a2'
console.log(compress("aaa")); // 'a3'
console.log(compress("aaab")); // 'a3b'
console.log(compress("aaabb")); // 'a3b2'
console.log(compress("aaabba")); // 'a3b2a'

---

Uncompress a string

A paired challenge for the above one.

Common patterns used in computer science:

• encode, decode
• compress, uncompress

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @returns {string}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(n)
function uncompress(str) {
  const stack = [];
  let currentNum = 0;
  let currentStr = "";

  for (const char of str) {
    if (char >= "0" && char <= "9") {
      currentNum = currentNum * 10 + Number(char);
    } else if (char === "(") {
      stack.push([currentStr, currentNum]);
      currentStr = "";
      currentNum = 0;
    } else if (char === ")") {
      const [prevStr, num] = stack.pop();
      currentStr = prevStr + currentStr.repeat(num);
    } else {
      currentStr += char;
    }
  }

  return currentStr;
}

// Usage example
console.log(uncompress("3(ab)")); // => 'ababab'
console.log(uncompress("3(ab2(c))")); // => 'abccabccabcc'

---

Find the length of the longest word in a string

Split the string first and then count the longest word length.

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @return {number}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(1)
function longestLength(str) {
  const strArr = str.split(" ");
  let maxLen = 0;

  for (let i = 0; i < strArr.length; i++) {
    if (strArr[i].length > maxLen) {
      maxLen = strArr[i].length;
    }
  }
  return maxLen;
}

// Usage example
console.log(longestLength("The longest word is thelongestword")); // => 14

---

Find the word with longest length in a string

Similar structure with the above one, just use one more variable to store the word with maximum length.

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @return {string[]}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(n)
function longestWord(str) {
  const strArr = str.split(" ");
  let maxLen = 0;
  let maxWord = "";

  for (const char of strArr) {
    if (char.length > maxLen) {
      max = char.length;
      maxWord = char;
    }
  }

  return maxWord;
}

// Usage example
console.log(longestWord("The longest word is thelongestword")); // => "thelongestword"

---

Most frequently occurring character

Use a map to store the characters and their occurrences.

/**
 * @param {string} str
 * @returns {string | string[]}
 */

// Time: O(n) | Space: O(n)
function count(str) {
  const map = new Map();
  const result = [];

  for (const char of str) {
    map.set(char, (map.get(char) ?? 0) + 1);
  }

  const max = Math.max(...map.values());

  for (const [key, value] of map) {
    if (value === max) {
      result.push(key);
    }
  }

  return result.length === 1 ? result[0] : result;
}

// Usage example
console.log(count("abbccc")); // => 'c'
console.log(count("abbcccddd")); // => ['c', 'd'];

---

Get string length(support emojis)

Traditionally, emojis may count as two characters long when using .length to get string length.

To count emojis as one character long, you can use the new Intl.Segmenter().

/**
 * @param {String} str
 * @return {Number}
 */

// Time: O(1) | Space: O(1)
function getStringLength(str) {
  return Array.from(new Intl.Segmenter().segment(str)).length;
}

// Usage example
console.log(getStringLength("test😁")); // => 5
console.log("test😁".length); // => 6

---

Reference

• Alphanumericals - Wikipedia.org
• Naming convention (programming) - Wikipedia.org
• 79. convert snake_case to camelCase - BFE.dev
• Software versioning - Wikipedia.org
• 157. semver compare - BFE.dev
• 165. Compare Version Numbers - LeetCode
• 97. compress a string - BFE.dev
• 173. uncompress string - BFE.dev
• 145. most frequently occurring character -BFE.dev