JavaScript: Check if a given string is an anagram of another string (case-insensitive, ignores spaces, punctuation and special characters)

JavaScript fundamental (ES6 Syntax): Exercise-206 with Solution

Check Anagram

Write a JavaScript program to check if a given string is an anagram of another string (case-insensitive, ignores spaces, punctuation and special characters).

• Use String.prototype.toLowerCase() and String.prototype.replace() with an appropriate regular expression to remove unnecessary characters.
• Use String.prototype.split(''), Array.prototype.sort() and Array.prototype.join('') on both strings to normalize them, then check if their normalized forms are equal.

Sample Solution:

JavaScript Code:

// Define a function 'isAnagram' that checks if two input strings are anagrams of each other
const isAnagram = (str1, str2) => {
  // Define a helper function 'normalize' to normalize the input string
  const normalize = str =>
    str
      .toLowerCase() // Convert the string to lowercase
      .replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '') // Remove non-alphanumeric characters
      .split('') // Convert the string to an array of characters
      .sort() // Sort the characters in alphabetical order
      .join(''); // Convert the array back to a string

  // Check if the normalized form of the first string is equal to the normalized form of the second string
  return normalize(str1) === normalize(str2);
};

// Test cases to check if the input strings are anagrams
console.log(isAnagram('iceman', 'cinema')); // true (both strings contain the same letters)
console.log(isAnagram('madam', 'madam')); // true (both strings are the same)

Output:

true
true

Visual Presentation:

Flowchart:

Live Demo:

See the Pen javascript-basic-exercise-206-1 by w3resource (@w3resource) on CodePen.

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

• Write a JavaScript program that checks if two strings are anagrams by comparing sorted versions of the normalized strings.
• Write a JavaScript function that removes spaces and punctuation, then compares character frequencies to determine anagrams.
• Write a JavaScript program that uses a hash map to count characters in two strings and compares the counts.
• Write a JavaScript function that returns true if two strings are anagrams, ignoring case and special characters.

Improve this sample solution and post your code through Disqus

Previous: Write a JavaScript program to check whether the provided argument is array-like (i.e. is iterable).
Next: Write a JavaScript program to that will return true if the given string is an absolute URL, false otherwise.