Using JavaScript to check if a string is a palindrome

A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters that reads the same backward as forward.

What Is A Palindrome?

A palindrome is a word, number, or phrase that reads the same backward as it does forward, which means you may read from the final letter to the first letter and obtain the same content as if you read from the first letter. Palindromes include: dad, mom, radar, taco cat.

Creating Our JavaScript Function

So now that we know how a Palindrome works, we will create a JavaScript function which will accept a string as argument and return true if the string is a Palindrome, else it will return false.  Also, the function accepts other parameters such as ignoreWhitespace and caseSensitive.  These two other parameters are there to adjust how the function works.

The Code

const isPalindrome = (content, ignoreWhitespace = false, caseSensitive = false) => {
	if (ignoreWhitespace) content = content.replaceAll(" ", "");
	if (!caseSensitive) content = content.toLowerCase();

	return content.split("").reverse().join("") === content;
};

Explaining the code

Now the function above is self explanatory. We split the content into an array with split("") and then we reverse it with reverse(), we then convert it back to a string with join(""). .Let me explain the other two parameters. First of all, if the ignoreWhitespace parameter is set to true, it strips all the whitespace from your content and if the caseSensitive parameter is set to false, it converts all your content to lowercase before comparing it to its reversed form. Let's see when and where to set either of the functions to true or false.

if you are to call the function isPalindrome("taco cat") // => false, it will return false. This is because, when you reverse the two strings, you get two different contents.

content = taco cat
reversed = tac ocat

Now, you see clearly why the function returned false, because the two strings are not the same but if the ignoreWhitecase parameter is set to true, it removes all the whitespace from your string, then it reverses and checks to see if they are equal.

content = tacocat
reversed = tacocat

Now, let's when to use the caseSensitive parameter. If we are to take a look at this content "Taco Cat", you can say it's a palindrome and you can also say it's not. This is because the reversed form is not actually equal to the normal content. If caseSensitive is set to true, these are the results which we get.

content = Taco Cat
reversed = taC ocaT

As you can see, they aren't actually the same if we are to mind the case in which the text is in.

Conclusion

So fellas, that's how to create a function which can check if a string is a palindrome in JavaScript. 😄