Trying to solve symmetric difference using Javascript

Question

I am trying to figure out a solution for symmetric difference using javascript that accomplishes the following objectives:

• accepts an unspecified number of ar

Answer 1

I came across this question in my research of the same coding challenge on FCC. I was able to solve it using for and while loops, but had some trouble solving using the recommended Array.reduce(). After learning a ton about .reduce and other array methods, I thought I'd share my solutions as well.

This is the first way I solved it, without using .reduce.

function sym() {
  var arrays = [].slice.call(arguments);

  function diff(arr1, arr2) {
    var arr = [];

    arr1.forEach(function(v) {
      if ( !~arr2.indexOf(v) && !~arr.indexOf(v) ) {
        arr.push( v );
      }
    });

    arr2.forEach(function(v) {
      if ( !~arr1.indexOf(v) && !~arr.indexOf(v) ) {
        arr.push( v );
      }
    });
    return arr;
  }

  var result = diff(arrays.shift(), arrays.shift());

  while (arrays.length > 0) {
    result = diff(result, arrays.shift());
  }

  return result;
}

After learning and trying various method combinations, I came up with this that I think is pretty succinct and readable.

function sym() {
  var arrays = [].slice.call(arguments);

  function diff(arr1, arr2) {
    return arr1.filter(function (v) {
      return !~arr2.indexOf(v);
    });
  }

  return arrays.reduce(function (accArr, curArr) { 
    return [].concat( diff(accArr, curArr), diff(curArr, accArr) )
    .filter(function (v, i, self) { return self.indexOf(v) === i; });
  });

}

That last .filter line I thought was pretty cool to dedup an array. I found it here, but modified it to use the 3rd callback parameter instead of the named array due to the method chaining.

This challenge was a lot of fun!