Reverse Words in a Sentence

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Problem Statement

Reverse the order of words in a given sentence (an array of characters). Take the “Hello World” string for example:

widget

Hint

  • Note how the words are separated by whitespaces

Try it yourself

void reverse_words(char * sentence) {
//TODO: Write - Your - Code
}

Solution

void str_rev(char * str, int len) {
if (str == nullptr || len < 2) {
return;
}
char * start = str;
char * end = str + len - 1;
while (start < end) {
if (start != nullptr && end != nullptr) {
char temp = * start;
* start = * end;
* end = temp;
}
start++;
end--;
}
}
void reverse_words(char * sentence) {
// Here sentence is a null-terminated string ending with char '\0'.
if (sentence == nullptr) {
return;
}
// To reverse all words in the string, we will first reverse
// the string. Now all the words are in the desired location, but
// in reverse order: "Hello World" -> "dlroW olleH".
int len = strlen(sentence);
str_rev(sentence, len);
// Now, let's iterate the sentence and reverse each word in place.
// "dlroW olleH" -> "World Hello"
char * start = sentence;
char * end;
while (true) {
// find the start index of a word while skipping spaces.
while (start && * start == ' ') {
++start;
}
if (start == nullptr || * start == '\0') {
break;
}
// find the end index of the word.
end = start + 1;
while (end && * end != '\0' && * end != ' ') {
++end;
}
// let's reverse the word in-place.
if (end != nullptr) {
str_rev(start, (end - start));
}
start = end;
}
}
int main() {
string str = "Hello World!";
char* a = const_cast<char*>(str.c_str());
cout << a << endl;
reverse_words(a);
cout << a << endl;
}

Solution Explanation

Runtime complexity

The runtime complexity of this solution is linear, O(n).

Position of all the elements in the sentence is changed.

Memory complexity

The memory complexity of this solution is constant, O(1).


Solution Breakdown

Here is how the solution works:

  • Reverse the string.
  • Traverse the string and reverse each word in place.

Practice problems like this and many more by checking out our Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions course!