Efficiently reverse the order of the words (not characters) in an array of characters

Question

Given an array of characters which forms a sentence of words, give an efficient algorithm to reverse the order of the words (not characters) in it.

Example input and

Answer 1

@Daren Thomas

Implementation of your algorithm (O(N) in time, O(1) in space) in D (Digital Mars):

#!/usr/bin/dmd -run
/**
 * to compile & run:
 * $ dmd -run reverse_words.d
 * to optimize:
 * $ dmd -O -inline -release reverse_words.d
 */
import std.algorithm: reverse;
import std.stdio: writeln;
import std.string: find;

void reverse_words(char[] str) {
  // reverse whole string
  reverse(str);

  // reverse each word
  for (auto i = 0; (i = find(str, " ")) != -1; str = str[i + 1..length])
    reverse(str[0..i]);

  // reverse last word
  reverse(str);
}

void main() {
  char[] str = cast(char[])("this is a string");
  writeln(str);
  reverse_words(str);
  writeln(str);
}

Output:

this is a string
string a is this