Find all the words in a string which have the greatest length

Question

I want to find all the words from the string which have the greatest length.

At the moment, the result is just the first with the greatest length: 'jumped1', whereas I want them all: ['jumped1', 'jumped2'].

How can I adapt the following?

function test(str) {

  var newStr = str.split(' ');
  var nu = 0;
  var word =null;

  for(var i=0; i < newStr.length; i++){
     if(newStr[i].length > nu){
       nu = newStr[i].length; // length
       word = newStr[i]; // word

     }    
  }
  return word;
}

console.log(test("The quick brown fox jumped1 over the lazy dog - jumped2"));

what do you mean by "multiple words"? Do you mean words with numbers on the end or do you want an array of all the words with the greatest lengths? — Joe Iddon, Sep 01 '18 at 17:42
@Joe I think they just mean more than 1 word if therss multiple words of the same length — Nick is tired, Sep 01 '18 at 17:44
nop, jumped1 and jumped2, currently it only shows jumped1 , because both are same length (7) — Shanu T Thankachan, Sep 01 '18 at 17:44
So if the longest word in the array is length 7, return all words of length 7 ? — vapurrmaid, Sep 01 '18 at 17:45
I think putting '>=' instead of '>' in your if statement will return the desired result? and this one => word = newStr[i]; will be word += newStr[i]; — Mohammad Reza Farahani, Sep 01 '18 at 17:48

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:48

3

Instead of assigning to a variable, word, when you find longest word, push it to an array of longest words. You have to handle blanking the array though when a new longest word is found.

function test(str) {
  var split_string = str.split(' ');
  var longest_length = 0;
  var words = [];
  for(let string of split_string){
     if(string.length > longest_length){
       words = [string];
       longest_length = string.length;
     } else if (string.length == longest_length){
       words.push(string);
     }
  }
  return words;
}

console.log(test("The quick brown fox jumped1 over the lazy dog - jumped2"));

answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:48

Joe Iddon

20,101
7
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100% genius !, no comments – Shanu T Thankachan Sep 01 '18 at 18:23
@ShanuTThankachan If the answer resolved your issue, please [mark it as accepted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5235/289255) – adiga Nov 27 '20 at 05:39

Nick is tired · Answer 2 · 2018-09-01T17:57:04.250

2

You can use reduce to get the length of the longest word and then filter to get the list of words of that length:

function test(str) {
  var words = str.split(' ');
  var maxLen = words.reduce(function(num, word){
    return Math.max(num, word.length);
  }, 0);
  
  return words.filter(function(word){
    return word.length == maxLen
  });
}

console.log(test("The quick brown fox jumped1 over the lazy dog - jumped2"));

edited Sep 01 '18 at 17:57

answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:48

Nick is tired

6,860
20
39
51

This is `O(2n)`, however `O(n)` is possible. – Joe Iddon Sep 01 '18 at 17:49
@JoeIddon Although I see your point, you wouldn't take into account the 2, see [Which algorithm is faster O(N) or O(2N)?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25777714/which-algorithm-is-faster-on-or-o2n) – Nick is tired Sep 01 '18 at 17:50
1

@NickA Yes, both their execution times scale linearly with the input size, just mine is always twice as fast :). Yours is still a cool functional approach so +1 from me! – Joe Iddon Sep 01 '18 at 17:53
1

@JoeIddon In theory ;) To the best of my knowledge `reduce` and `filter` perform faster than iteration (although I could be wrong on that!), and likewise to yours for the O(n). – Nick is tired Sep 01 '18 at 17:54

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:49

0

If I understand the question correctly, you can use filter after finding the max length in order to return an Array of every word with length === max

function test (str) {
  let words = str.split(' ')
  let max = 0
  words.forEach(word => {
    if (word.length > max) max = word.length
  })
  return words.filter(word => word.length === max)
}

console.log(
test("The quick brown fox jumped1 over the lazy dog - jumped2")
)

answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:49

vapurrmaid

2,287
2
14
30

This is `O(2n)`, however `O(n)` is possible. – Joe Iddon Sep 01 '18 at 17:50
Thanks @JoeIddon, I didn't realize how to accumulate in one pass - your answer is elegant – vapurrmaid Sep 01 '18 at 20:51

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 01 '18 at 17:53

You could reduce the array by collecting longer words or with same length.

function test(string) {
    return string
        .split(' ')
        .reduce((r, w) => {
            if (!r || r[0].length < w.length) {
                return [w];
            }
            if (r[0].length === w.length) {
                r.push(w);
            }
            return r;
        }, undefined);
}

console.log(test("The quick brown fox jumped1 over the lazy dog - jumped2"));

Find all the words in a string which have the greatest length

4 Answers4

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