[removed] find longest word in a string

Question

function longestWord(string) {
    var str = string.split(\" \");
    var longest = 0;
    var word = null;
    for (var i = 0; i < str.length - 1; i++) {
                


        

Answer 1

One advantage to taking a functional approach to such problems is that you don't even have to keep count

See MDN Array.reduce for more info. (note: reduce needs shim for IE8)

function longer(champ, contender) {
  return (contender.length > champ.length) ? contender : champ;
}

function longestWord(str) {
  var words = str.split(' ');
  return words.reduce(longer);
}

console.log(longestWord("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs"));

Answer 2

You need to use:

for (var i=0;i<=str.length - 1; i++)

That way it will scan the entire phrase

Answer 3

Is there a specific reason

for (var i = 0; i < str.length - 1; i++)

isn't

for (var i = 0; i < str.length - 1; i++)

That seems like it could be the cause.

Answer 4

This seems to be the easiest way to do this.

function longestWord(string) {
    var str = string.split(" ");
    var longest = 0;
    var word = null;

    str.forEach(function(str) {
        if (longest < str.length) {
            longest = str.length;
            word = str;
        }
    });

return word;

}

Answer 5

Here is one other way to solve it.

function findLongestWord(str) {
  var result = [];
  
  var one = str.split(" ");
    
   for (var i = 0; i < one.length; i++) {
    result[i] = one[i].length;
     result.reverse().sort(function(a,b) {
       return b-a;
     });   
   }
  return result[0];
}

Answer 6

Here this is your solution with a forEach, this will help you avoid the error in the future

function longestWord(string) {
    var str = string.split(" ");
    var longest = 0;
    var word = null;
    str.forEach(function(str) {
        if (longest < str.length) {
            longest = str.length;
            word = str;
        }
    });
    return word;
}
console.log(longestWord("pride and prejudice"));

Your original problem was just the str.length - 1 should have just been str.length, originally you wouldn't have gotten to the last element of the array