JavaScript: Reverse Arrays

By  on  

Manipulating data is core to any programming language. JavaScript is no exception, especially as JSON has token over as a prime data delivery format. One such data manipulation is reversing arrays. You may want to reverse an array to show most recent transactions, or simple alphabetic sorting.

Reversing arrays with JavaScript originally was done via reverse but that would mutate the original array:

// First value:
const arr = ['hi', 'low', 'ahhh'];

// Reverse it without reassigning:
arr.reverse();

// Value:
arr (3) ['ahhh', 'low', 'hi']

Modifying the original array is a legacy methodology. To avoid this mutation, we'd copy the array and then reverse it:

const reversed = [...arr].reverse();

These days we can use toReversed to avoid mutating the original array:

const arr = ['hi', 'low', 'ahhh'];
const reversed = arr.toReversed(); // (3) ['ahhh', 'low', 'hi'];
arr; // ['hi', 'low', 'ahhh']

Avoiding mutation of data objects is incredibly important in a programming language like JavaScript where object references are meaningful.

Recent Features

  • By
    From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!

    My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!