How would you improve this algorithm? (c string re

Question

Working through some programming interview challenges I found online, I had to write an algorithm to reverse a const char * and return a pointer to a new char *. I think I have it, but to make it work properly I had to do some wonky stuff - basically having to account for the null-terminating character myself. Somehow I feel this is wrong, but I'm stumped, and I was wondering if someone could help me out:

char * reverse(const char * str)
{
  int length = strlen(str);
  char * reversed_string = new char[length+1];

  for(int i = 0; i < length; ++i)
  {
    reversed_string[i] = str[(length-1) - i];
  }
  //need to null terminate the string
  reversed_string[length] = '\0';

  return reversed_string;

}

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{

  char * rev_str = reverse("Testing");

  cout << "Your string reversed is this: " << rev_str << endl;

  delete rev_str;
  rev_str = 0;

  return 0;
}

Answer 1

Actually, given the constraint that the original string be left unmodified, I think the original approach given in the question is the best. All these fancy approaches to reversing in place people are posting are great, but once copying the given string is factored in, they are all less efficient than simply copying the string backwards.

Answer 2

WRT: "Now do it without temporary holding variable"... Something like this perhaps (and keeping array indexing for now):

int length = strlen(string);
for(int i = 0; i < length/2; i++) {
  string[i] ^= string[length - i];
  string[length - i] ^= string[i];
  string[i] ^= string[length - i];
}

Answer 3

I would have solved it sort of like this (my c is a bit rusty though, forgive me)

char *reverse( const char *source ) {
  int len = strlen( source );
  char *dest = new char[ len + 1 ];
  int i = 0;
  int j = len;
  while( j > 0 ) {
    dest[j--] = src[i++];
  }
  dest[i] = \0;
  return dest;
}

Answer 4

Above for loop has typo. Check of loop variable i should be <= instead of <, othrewise will fail for odd no of elements. for(int i = 0; i <= length/2; ++i)

Answer 5

if( string[0] )
{
    char *end = string + strlen(string)-1;
    while( start < end )
    {
        char temp = *string;
        *string++ = *end;
        *end-- = temp;
    }
}

Answer 6

I know this is highly unportable but x86 assembler instruction bswap lets you swap four bytes by means of just one instruction which can be a good path to boost the code.

This is an example of how to get it working with GCC.

/* 
 * reverse.c
 *
 * $20081020 23:33 fernando DOT miguelez AT gmail DOT com$
 */

#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

#define MAX_CHARS 10 * 1024 * 1024

/*
 * Borrowed from http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Assembler/comp.lang.asm.x86/2007-03/msg00004.html
 * GNU Compiler syntax
 */
inline uint32_t bswap(uint32_t val)
{
    __asm__("bswap %0" : "=r" (val) : "0" (val));
    return val;
}

char * reverseAsm(const char * str)
{
    int i;
    int length = strlen(str);
    int dwordLength = length/4;

    if(length % 4 != 0)
    {
        printf("Error: Input string length must be multiple of 4: %d\n", length);       
        return NULL;
    }

    char * reversed_string = (char *) malloc(length+1);
    for(i = 0; i < dwordLength; i++)
    {
        *(((uint32_t *) reversed_string) + dwordLength - i - 1) = bswap(*(((uint32_t *) str) + i));
    }

    reversed_string[length] = '\0';

    return reversed_string;
}

char * reverse(const char * str)
{
    int i;
    int length = strlen(str);
    char * reversed_string = (char *) malloc(length+1);

    for(i = 0; i < length; ++i)
    {
        reversed_string[i] = str[(length-1) - i];
    }

        //need to null terminate the string

    reversed_string[length] = '\0';

    return reversed_string;
}

int main(void)
{
    int i;
    char *reversed_str, *reversed_str2;
    clock_t start, total;
    char *str = (char *) malloc(MAX_CHARS+1);

    str[MAX_CHARS] = '\0';

    srand(time(0));

    for(i = 0; i < MAX_CHARS; i++)
    {
        str[i] = 'A' + rand() % 26;     
    }

    start = clock();
    reversed_str = reverse(str);
    total = clock() - start;
    if(reversed_str != NULL)
    {
        printf("Total clock ticks to reverse %d chars with pure C method: %d\n", MAX_CHARS, total); 
        free(reversed_str);
    }
    start = clock();
    reversed_str2 = reverseAsm(str);
    total = clock() - start;
    if(reversed_str2 != NULL)
    {
        printf("Total clock ticks to reverse %d chars with ASM+C method: %d\n", MAX_CHARS, total); 
        free(reversed_str2);
    }

    free(str);

    return 0;
}

The results on my old computer under Cygwin:

fer@fernando /cygdrive/c/tmp$ ./reverse.exe
Total clock ticks to reverse 10485760 chars with pure C method: 221
Total clock ticks to reverse 10485760 chars with ASM+C method: 140