Best way to reverse a string

Question

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?

Answer 1

public static string Reverse(string input)
{
    return string.Concat(Enumerable.Reverse(input));
}

Of course you can extend string class with Reverse method

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string Reverse(this string input)
    {
        return string.Concat(Enumerable.Reverse(input));
    }
}

Answer 2

How about use Substring

static string ReverseString(string text)
{
    string sub = "";
    int indexCount = text.Length - 1;
    for (int i = indexCount; i > -1; i--)
    {
        sub = sub + text.Substring(i, 1);
    }
    return sub;
}

Answer 3

Greg Beech posted an unsafe option that is indeed as fast as it gets (it's an in-place reversal); but, as he indicated in his answer, it's a completely disastrous idea.

That said, I'm surprised there is so much of a consensus that Array.Reverse is the fastest method. There's still an unsafe approach that returns a reversed copy of a string (no in-place reversal shenanigans) significantly faster than the Array.Reverse method for small strings:

public static unsafe string Reverse(string text)
{
    int len = text.Length;

    // Why allocate a char[] array on the heap when you won't use it
    // outside of this method? Use the stack.
    char* reversed = stackalloc char[len];

    // Avoid bounds-checking performance penalties.
    fixed (char* str = text)
    {
        int i = 0;
        int j = i + len - 1;
        while (i < len)
        {
            reversed[i++] = str[j--];
        }
    }

    // Need to use this overload for the System.String constructor
    // as providing just the char* pointer could result in garbage
    // at the end of the string (no guarantee of null terminator).
    return new string(reversed, 0, len);
}

Here are some benchmark results.

You can see that the performance gain shrinks and then disappears against the Array.Reverse method as the strings get larger. For small- to medium-sized strings, though, it's tough to beat this method.

Answer 4

public string Reverse(string input)
{
    char[] output = new char[input.Length];

    int forwards = 0;
    int backwards = input.Length - 1;

    do
    {
        output[forwards] = input[backwards];
        output[backwards] = input[forwards];
    }while(++forwards <= --backwards);

    return new String(output);
}

public string DotNetReverse(string input)
{
    char[] toReverse = input.ToCharArray();
    Array.Reverse(toReverse);
    return new String(toReverse);
}

public string NaiveReverse(string input)
{
    char[] outputArray = new char[input.Length];
    for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
    {
        outputArray[i] = input[input.Length - 1 - i];
    }

    return new String(outputArray);
}    

public string RecursiveReverse(string input)
{
    return RecursiveReverseHelper(input, 0, input.Length - 1);
}

public string RecursiveReverseHelper(string input, int startIndex , int endIndex)
{
    if (startIndex == endIndex)
    {
        return "" + input[startIndex];
    }

    if (endIndex - startIndex == 1)
    {
        return "" + input[endIndex] + input[startIndex];
    }

    return input[endIndex] + RecursiveReverseHelper(input, startIndex + 1, endIndex - 1) + input[startIndex];
}


void Main()
{
    int[] sizes = new int[] { 10, 100, 1000, 10000 };
    for(int sizeIndex = 0; sizeIndex < sizes.Length; sizeIndex++)
    {
        string holaMundo  = "";
        for(int i = 0; i < sizes[sizeIndex]; i+= 5)
        {   
            holaMundo += "ABCDE";
        }

        string.Format("\n**** For size: {0} ****\n", sizes[sizeIndex]).Dump();

        string odnuMaloh = DotNetReverse(holaMundo);

        var stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
        string result = NaiveReverse(holaMundo);
        ("Naive Ticks: " + stopWatch.ElapsedTicks).Dump();

        stopWatch.Restart();
        result = Reverse(holaMundo);
        ("Efficient linear Ticks: " + stopWatch.ElapsedTicks).Dump();

        stopWatch.Restart();
        result = RecursiveReverse(holaMundo);
        ("Recursive Ticks: " + stopWatch.ElapsedTicks).Dump();

        stopWatch.Restart();
        result = DotNetReverse(holaMundo);
        ("DotNet Reverse Ticks: " + stopWatch.ElapsedTicks).Dump();
    }
}

Output

For size: 10

Naive Ticks: 1
Efficient linear Ticks: 0
Recursive Ticks: 2
DotNet Reverse Ticks: 1

For size: 100

Naive Ticks: 2
Efficient linear Ticks: 1
Recursive Ticks: 12
DotNet Reverse Ticks: 1

For size: 1000

Naive Ticks: 5
Efficient linear Ticks: 2
Recursive Ticks: 358
DotNet Reverse Ticks: 9

For size: 10000

Naive Ticks: 32
Efficient linear Ticks: 28
Recursive Ticks: 84808
DotNet Reverse Ticks: 33

Answer 5

Try using Array.Reverse

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

Answer 6

If you have a string that only contains ASCII characters, you can use this method.

    public static string ASCIIReverse(string s)
    {
        byte[] reversed = new byte[s.Length];

        int k = 0;
        for (int i = s.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
        {
            reversed[k++] = (byte)s[i];
        }

        return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(reversed);
    }