Best way to reverse a string

I've just had to write a string reverse function in C# 2.0 (i.e. LINQ not available) and came up with this:

public string Reverse(string text)
{
    char[] cArray = text.ToCharArray();
    string reverse = String.Empty;
    for (int i = cArray.Length - 1; i > -1; i--)
    {
        reverse += cArray[i];
    }
    return reverse;
}

Personally I'm not crazy about the function and am convinced that there's a better way to do it. Is there?

Solution 1:

public static string Reverse( string s )
{
    char[] charArray = s.ToCharArray();
    Array.Reverse( charArray );
    return new string( charArray );
}

Solution 2:

Here a solution that properly reverses the string "Les Mise\u0301rables" as "selbare\u0301siM seL". This should render just like selbarésiM seL, not selbaŕesiM seL (note the position of the accent), as would the result of most implementations based on code units (Array.Reverse, etc) or even code points (reversing with special care for surrogate pairs).

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Linq;

public static class Test
{
    private static IEnumerable<string> GraphemeClusters(this string s) {
        var enumerator = StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator(s);
        while(enumerator.MoveNext()) {
            yield return (string)enumerator.Current;
        }
    }
    private static string ReverseGraphemeClusters(this string s) {
        return string.Join("", s.GraphemeClusters().Reverse().ToArray());
    }

    public static void Main()
    {
        var s = "Les Mise\u0301rables";
        var r = s.ReverseGraphemeClusters();
        Console.WriteLine(r);
    }
}

(And live running example here: https://ideone.com/DqAeMJ)

It simply uses the .NET API for grapheme cluster iteration, which has been there since ever, but a bit "hidden" from view, it seems.

Solution 3:

This is turning out to be a surprisingly tricky question.

I would recommend using Array.Reverse for most cases as it is coded natively and it is very simple to maintain and understand.

It seems to outperform StringBuilder in all the cases I tested.

public string Reverse(string text)
{
   if (text == null) return null;

   // this was posted by petebob as well 
   char[] array = text.ToCharArray();
   Array.Reverse(array);
   return new String(array);
}

There is a second approach that can be faster for certain string lengths which uses Xor.

    public static string ReverseXor(string s)
    {
        if (s == null) return null;
        char[] charArray = s.ToCharArray();
        int len = s.Length - 1;

        for (int i = 0; i < len; i++, len--)
        {
            charArray[i] ^= charArray[len];
            charArray[len] ^= charArray[i];
            charArray[i] ^= charArray[len];
        }

        return new string(charArray);
    }

Note If you want to support the full Unicode UTF16 charset read this. And use the implementation there instead. It can be further optimized by using one of the above algorithms and running through the string to clean it up after the chars are reversed.

Here is a performance comparison between the StringBuilder, Array.Reverse and Xor method.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ConsoleApplication4
{
    class Program
    {
        delegate string StringDelegate(string s);

        static void Benchmark(string description, StringDelegate d, int times, string text)
        {
            Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int j = 0; j < times; j++)
            {
                d(text);
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("{0} Ticks {1} : called {2} times.", sw.ElapsedTicks, description, times);
        }

        public static string ReverseXor(string s)
        {
            char[] charArray = s.ToCharArray();
            int len = s.Length - 1;

            for (int i = 0; i < len; i++, len--)
            {
                charArray[i] ^= charArray[len];
                charArray[len] ^= charArray[i];
                charArray[i] ^= charArray[len];
            }

            return new string(charArray);
        }

        public static string ReverseSB(string text)
        {
            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(text.Length);
            for (int i = text.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
            {
                builder.Append(text[i]);
            }
            return builder.ToString();
        }

        public static string ReverseArray(string text)
        {
            char[] array = text.ToCharArray();
            Array.Reverse(array);
            return (new string(array));
        }

        public static string StringOfLength(int length)
        {
            Random random = new Random();
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
            {
                sb.Append(Convert.ToChar(Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(26 * random.NextDouble() + 65))));
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            int[] lengths = new int[] {1,10,15,25,50,75,100,1000,100000};

            foreach (int l in lengths)
            {
                int iterations = 10000;
                string text = StringOfLength(l);
                Benchmark(String.Format("String Builder (Length: {0})", l), ReverseSB, iterations, text);
                Benchmark(String.Format("Array.Reverse (Length: {0})", l), ReverseArray, iterations, text);
                Benchmark(String.Format("Xor (Length: {0})", l), ReverseXor, iterations, text);

                Console.WriteLine();    
            }

            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

Here are the results:

26251 Ticks String Builder (Length: 1) : called 10000 times.
33373 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 1) : called 10000 times.
20162 Ticks Xor (Length: 1) : called 10000 times.

51321 Ticks String Builder (Length: 10) : called 10000 times.
37105 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 10) : called 10000 times.
23974 Ticks Xor (Length: 10) : called 10000 times.

66570 Ticks String Builder (Length: 15) : called 10000 times.
26027 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 15) : called 10000 times.
24017 Ticks Xor (Length: 15) : called 10000 times.

101609 Ticks String Builder (Length: 25) : called 10000 times.
28472 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 25) : called 10000 times.
35355 Ticks Xor (Length: 25) : called 10000 times.

161601 Ticks String Builder (Length: 50) : called 10000 times.
35839 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 50) : called 10000 times.
51185 Ticks Xor (Length: 50) : called 10000 times.

230898 Ticks String Builder (Length: 75) : called 10000 times.
40628 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 75) : called 10000 times.
78906 Ticks Xor (Length: 75) : called 10000 times.

312017 Ticks String Builder (Length: 100) : called 10000 times.
52225 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 100) : called 10000 times.
110195 Ticks Xor (Length: 100) : called 10000 times.

2970691 Ticks String Builder (Length: 1000) : called 10000 times.
292094 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 1000) : called 10000 times.
846585 Ticks Xor (Length: 1000) : called 10000 times.

305564115 Ticks String Builder (Length: 100000) : called 10000 times.
74884495 Ticks Array.Reverse (Length: 100000) : called 10000 times.
125409674 Ticks Xor (Length: 100000) : called 10000 times.

It seems that Xor can be faster for short strings.

Solution 4:

If you can use LINQ (.NET Framework 3.5+) than following one liner will give you short code. Don't forget to add using System.Linq; to have access to Enumerable.Reverse:

public string ReverseString(string srtVarable)
{
    return new string(srtVarable.Reverse().ToArray());
}

Notes:

• not the fastest version - according to Martin Niederl 5.7 times slower than the fastest choice here.
• this code as many other options completely ignores all sorts of multi-character combinations, so limit usage to homework assignments and strings which do not contain such characters. See another answer in this question for implementation that correctly handles such combinations.