How to reverse a string in Go?

Question

How can we reverse a simple string in Go?

Answer 1

Here is yet another solution:

func ReverseStr(s string) string {
    chars := []rune(s)
    rev := make([]rune, 0, len(chars))
    for i := len(chars) - 1; i >= 0; i-- {
        rev = append(rev, chars[i])
    }
    return string(rev)
}

However, yazu's solution above is more elegant since he reverses the []rune slice in place.

Answer 2

    func reverseString(someString string) string {
        runeString := []rune(someString)
        var reverseString string
        for i := len(runeString)-1; i >= 0; i -- {
            reverseString += string(runeString[i])
        }
        return reverseString
    }

Answer 3

If you need to handle grapheme clusters, use unicode or regexp module.

package main

import (
  "unicode"
  "regexp"
)

func main() {
    str := "\u0308" + "a\u0308" + "o\u0308" + "u\u0308"
    println("u\u0308" + "o\u0308" + "a\u0308" + "\u0308" == ReverseGrapheme(str))
    println("u\u0308" + "o\u0308" + "a\u0308" + "\u0308" == ReverseGrapheme2(str))
}

func ReverseGrapheme(str string) string {

  buf := []rune("")
  checked := false
  index := 0
  ret := "" 

    for _, c := range str {

        if !unicode.Is(unicode.M, c) {

            if len(buf) > 0 {
                ret = string(buf) + ret
            }

            buf = buf[:0]
            buf = append(buf, c)

            if checked == false {
                checked = true
            }

        } else if checked == false {
            ret = string(append([]rune(""), c)) + ret
        } else {
            buf = append(buf, c)
        }

        index += 1
    }

    return string(buf) + ret
}

func ReverseGrapheme2(str string) string {
    re := regexp.MustCompile("\\PM\\pM*|.")
    slice := re.FindAllString(str, -1)
    length := len(slice)
    ret := ""

    for i := 0; i < length; i += 1 {
        ret += slice[length-1-i]
    }

    return ret
}

Answer 4

I noticed this question when Simon posted his solution which, since strings are immutable, is very inefficient. The other proposed solutions are also flawed; they don't work or they are inefficient.

Here's an efficient solution that works, except when the string is not valid UTF-8 or the string contains combining characters.

package main

import "fmt"

func Reverse(s string) string {
    n := len(s)
    runes := make([]rune, n)
    for _, rune := range s {
        n--
        runes[n] = rune
    }
    return string(runes[n:])
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(Reverse(Reverse("Hello, 世界")))
    fmt.Println(Reverse(Reverse("The quick brown 狐 jumped over the lazy 犬")))
}

Answer 5

For simple strings it possible to use such construction:

func Reverse(str string) string {
    if str != "" {
        return Reverse(str[1:]) + str[:1]
    }
    return ""   
}

Answer 6

Russ Cox, on the golang-nuts mailing list, suggests

package main 
import "fmt"
func main() { 
        input := "The quick brown 狐 jumped over the lazy 犬" 
        // Get Unicode code points. 
        n := 0
        rune := make([]rune, len(input))
        for _, r := range input { 
                rune[n] = r
                n++
        } 
        rune = rune[0:n]
        // Reverse 
        for i := 0; i < n/2; i++ { 
                rune[i], rune[n-1-i] = rune[n-1-i], rune[i] 
        } 
        // Convert back to UTF-8. 
        output := string(rune)
        fmt.Println(output)
}