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JavaScript JavaScript Array Iteration Methods Array Iteration Examples Using forEach()

Jason Welsh
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Jason Welsh
Treehouse Project Reviewer
Posted by Jason Welsh
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Jason Welsh
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Why not use string.startsWith() instead?

For the second challenge, instead of using the charAt() method, why not use the cleaner and more readable ES6 'startsWith()' method?

ex:

const names = ["Selma", "Ted", "Mike", "Sam", "Sharon", "Marvin"];

let startsWithS = [];

names.forEach(name => {
  if (name.startsWith("S")) {
    startsWithS.push(name);
  }
});

console.log(startsWithS);

4 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points

Your suggestion does make a good alternative solution.

Out of curiosity, I bench-marked both approaches and found the original "charAt" solution to be about 30% more efficient. But I doubt it was selected for execution speed. It was probably just considered to be a more commonly used string method (and that may be just because it has been around longer).

As Joseph pointed out, there are often multiple ways to solve any specific problem. One of "Parker's Rules of Programming" is "the more complex the task, the more ways there will be to arrive at a solution". :wink:

nfs
nfs
35,526 Points

I seriously googled: Parker's Rules of Programming;

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points

:bulb: Perhaps they should get added there sometime! :wink:

Joseph Wasden
Joseph Wasden
20,406 Points
Joseph Wasden
Joseph Wasden
20,406 Points

You'll hear the instructor say a few key things during the video. Before solving, he states, "here's how I solved this," and, before using the charAt(), he says, (rough paraphrasing ahead) "I need to check the first letter of each word to know if I should add it to my sNames array. You could do this a couple ways. I used the charAt() method."

In other words, there are many ways to solve a problem, and many would work here. If you really needed it, you could research which method is most optimized for performance, but given this exercise, the difference is probably negligible.

Olga Ioffe
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Olga Ioffe
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 19,955 Points
Olga Ioffe
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Olga Ioffe
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 19,955 Points

I personally used startsWith() for my solution. I think it's semantically more readable what my code is doing here.

Kodie Ivie
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Kodie Ivie
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 21,250 Points
Kodie Ivie
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Kodie Ivie
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 21,250 Points

you know what they say: "ask 20 programmers to solve the same problem and you'll get 20 different ways of doing it". I myself used the slice method.. but i was surprised we both used sNames lol..

let sNames = [];

names.forEach(name => { if(name.slice(0, 1) === 'S'){ sNames.push(name); } });