endsWith() Polyfill Exercise

Inside the directory you created for this course on JavaScript, create a new folder called Exercise-15-endsWith()-Polyfill and put the .html solution files for this exercise within it.

Let's understand how to check whether a given string str ends with substr, at a given length.

First of all, we'll consider the simpler case — when length is not given, in which case we assume that substr has to come at the end of str.

How to accomplish this simpler case?

Well, there are mainly two ways — one uses indexOf() while the second one uses slice(). We'll see the difference between using either of these once we create the complete endsWithPolyfill() function.

Anyways, first let's consider the solution using indexOf().

Before we begin, it's useful to consider a few dummy arguments, see what to return in each case, and how to compute the return value. This planning is necessary before the actual coding.

Alright, time for some planning...

Suppose we have str as 'Hello' and substr as 'o', given to endsWithPolyfill(). The function should return true in this case, since str indeed ends with substr.

Now, let's see how to programmatically compute this.

str.indexOf(substr) returns 4. Moreover, the last index of str is also 4. Likewise, we conclude that substr occurs at the end of str.

Time for another example.

Suppose we have str as 'Hello' and substr as 'llo'. The function should again return True. str.indexOf(substr) is 2 and the last index of str is 4.

Hmm, so the two values are different.

Remeber that str.indexOf() just gives the index where a substring begins in a string. It doesn't give the index where it ends. But we could figure this out on our way using some elementary math.

Let's see it:

It would end at 4.

Can we derive a formula for this?

Well, definitely yes!

The index where a given substring substr ends in a string str is equal to str.indexOf(substr) + substr.length - 1.

In our case, if the ending index of substr in str is the same as the ending index of str, we can conclude that str ends with substr.

This solves the simple case. Now, let's solve the case when length is given.

Suppose that str is 'Food', substr is 'o' and length is 3. The function should return true since the constrained string, i.e. 'Foo', indeed ends with 'o'.

In this case, str.indexOf(substr) is 1, likewise substr ends at index 1. However, the string str ends at index 2.

What's the problem here? Can you spot the cause of the problem?

The problem is caused by indexOf(). It matches the first 'o' in str instead of the last one. How to solve this?

What we need to do is match the very last occurrence of substr in str. So, we could just use lastIndexOf().

Let's see what happens when we use lastIndexOf().

str.lastIndexOf(substr) is 2, which means that the index where this substr ends is (2 + 1 - 1 =) 2. The last index of str is also 2. Hence, we conclude that str ends with substr.

Great! This solves the second problem as well.

Below we create the implementation for endsWithPolyfill() using lastIndexOf():

function endsWithPolyfill(str, substr, length) {
    if (!length) length = str.length;
    if (str.indexOf(substr) + substr.length - 1 === string.length - 1)  return true;
    else return false;
}

Note that the code above can be simplified to the following:

function endsWithPolyfill(str, substr, length) {
    if (!length) length = str.length;
    return str.indexOf(substr) + substr.length - 1 === string.length - 1;
}

With the function created, let's check it on given arguments:

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'o')

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'ell')

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'ell', 4)

endsWithPolyfill('Food.', '.')

endsWithPolyfill('Food.', 'd', 4)

Another way to create a polyfill for endsWith() is to use the string method slice().

Let's start by solving the simple case, that is when length is not specified.

Suppose we have str as 'Hello' and substr as 'o' (and length is not specified). The function should return true since str indeed ends with substr.

But how to check this using slice()?

Well, we slice a portion of the same length as substr, from the end of str, and see if it is equal to substr. If it is, we conclude that str ends with substr.

In this case, the slice begins at index 4 and ends at 5, giving the string 'o' (the highlighted part in 'Hello'). Since this slice is equivalent to substr, we conclude that str indeed ends with substr.

Now suppose that str is 'Hello' and substr is 'llo'. The slice begins at index 2 and ends at index 5, giving the string 'llo'. Once again, because this slice is equal to substr, we return true from the function.

The question is: how to know where to start the slicing?

The slice begins at str.length - substr.length and goes upto str.length. If this slice is equivalent to substr, we return true, or else false.

Alright, time to solve the case when a length argument is given.

Suppose that str is 'Food', substr is 'o' and length is 3. Since the constrained string, i.e. 'Foo', indeed ends with 'o', the function should return true.

Let's see what slicing gives us.

We begin slicing at length - substr.length and go upto length. In this case, this means that we begin at index 2 and go upto 3, obtaining the string 'o' (the highlighted part in 'Food').

Since this slice equals substr, we conclude that yes, str indeed ends with substr.

Great! Both cases solved.

Below we create the implementation for endsWithPolyfill() using slice():

function endsWithPolyfill(str, substr, length) {
    if (!length) length = str.length;
    if (str.slice(length - substring.length, length) === substr)  return true;
    else return false;
}

As before, this could be simplified to the following code:

function endsWithPolyfill(str, substr, length) {
    if (!length) length = str.length;
    return str.slice(length - substring.length, length) === substr;
}

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'o')

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'ell')

endsWithPolyfill('Hello', 'ell', 4)

endsWithPolyfill('Food.', '.')

endsWithPolyfill('Food.', 'd', 4)

You may be thinking as to which implementation to use from these two — one based on lastIndexOf() while the other based on slice().

Let's see it using a simple experiment.

We'll run each of these functions 10,000,000 times on the same input arguments with the help of a loop and then time the script on our machine. After 5 such trials, we get the following result.

Notice how the implementation using slice() is way more performant than the one using lastIndexOf(), for exactly the same set of arguments.

So clearly, the slice()-based implementation is the one you should use in your applications if performance really matters.

However, for small string processing concerns, using one or the other won't make any significant difference.