How to Reverse a String in JavaScript

To reverse a string, you can transform the string into an array and then use JavaScript arrays' built-in reverse() method.

Array.from('help').reverse().join(''); // pleh

or

let str = 'help';
[...str].reverse().join(''); // pleh

You can also use str.split('').reverse().join(''), but we recommend using Array.from() or the spread operator. The split() method does not handle UTF-16 characters, like emojis.

Reverse a String Without Built-in Methods

Reversing a string without any built-in methods is a common interview question. You can use a for loop to iterate through the string in reverse as shown below.

let str = 'hello world';
let reversed = '';

for(let i = str.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
  result +=  str[i];
}

return result;

Using Recursion

Another approach for reversing a string is using recursion. The idea is that you can break down the problem of reversing a string into two steps:

1. Swap the first and last characters of the string
2. Reverse everything except for the first and last characters

function reverseString(str = '') {
  if (str.length <= 1) {
    return str;
  }

  const firstChar = str.charAt(0);
  const lastChar = str.charAt(str.length - 1);
  return lastChar + reverse(str.slice(1, str.length -1)) + firstChar;
}

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