Basic Algorithm Scripting - Find the Longest Word in a String

JavaScript
1

Tell us what’s happening:

Logically, my code should work, however my syntax or approach must be off somewhere. ‘let strLength = strBuffer.length;’ returns the type error in the console log however, since assigning the variable ‘strBuffer’ to ‘strArr[i]’, I get the lengths of each word isolated getting me the numbers into an array, ‘trackWordLength’, at their respective places.

So to my question, how come in the second for loop I cannot access the ‘trackWordLength’ array items using ‘trackWordLength[j]’ and ‘track

Your code so far

let codingRegex = /\w+/g; // extracts words to an array...
let trackWordLength = [];

function findLongestWordLength(str) 
{
  let strArr = str.match(codingRegex); // 1st for loop; creates array w/ each word at own position/index then creates array with each words length at respective positions
  let largestNum; // 2nd for loop; will store largest number after each loop executes

  for (let i = 0; i <= strArr.length; i++) // iterates through each word in array
  {
    let strBuffer = strArr[i];

    // can still access 'length' but getting error: 'Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'length')
    let strLength = strBuffer.length;

    //takes word 'i' length and pushes it to array 'trackWordLength' for access in 2nd loop
    trackWordLength.push(strLength);
    
    console.log(trackWordLength);
  }
  
  // compares number at index 'j' to all other numbers, then returns the largest
  for (let j = 0; j <= trackWordLength.length; j++)
  {
    if (trackWordLength[j] >= trackWordLength[j++])
    {
      largestNum = trackWordLength[j];
      console.log(largestNum); // not logging anything
    }
    else
    {
      largestNum = [j++];
      console.log(largestNum); // not logging anything
    }
  }

  return largestNum;
}

findLongestWordLength("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog");

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Challenge Information:

Basic Algorithm Scripting - Find the Longest Word in a String

2

My whole question did not copy for some reason… here:

So to my question, how come in the second for loop I cannot access the ‘trackWordLength’ array items using ‘trackWordLength[j]’ and ‘trackWordLength[j++]’ in order for my 2nd for loop to correctly store the largest number to ‘largestNum’ since this approach seemed valid (mostly) with the first for loop?

Maybe I could destructure the number elements from the array then access them that way as separate variables, but need some feedback on that. Been at this challenge for a couple days now.

Thank you!

3

Sorry, let me know if this is late and already solved but:

First problem is an off-by-one index problem.

You have 9 words, so the length is 9. The index is 0-8. If index = length then you are accessing index 9 and that’s undefined.

4

Thanks.

I eventually figured out the code (mine from my post was very wrong) and later discovered your suggestion was the final piece. Thanks for checking in.

5

I figured, glad you got it.

Key to a problem like this for me is just to log every variable to the console before I use it.

Keep crushing it!

1 Like