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Swap two array elements in JavaScript

In this short post, we are going to see about how to swap two array elements in JavaScript. Here, I have listed some methods that I’ve learnt to swap two array elements.

This is the array we going to use as an example.

let a = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'e', 'd']

1. Temporary Variable

Suppose we want to swap the elements in the index 2 and 3, we can use a temporary variable.

let tmp = a[4];
a[4] = a[3];
a[3] = tmp;
//[ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e' ]

2. Assignment Operator

Another option without the temporary variable, is to use this syntax:

const a = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'e', 'd'];

[a[3], a[4]] = [a[4], a[3]]; //[ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e' ]

3. Using splice() method

Here is an another way to swap the array elements.

var swapArrayElements = function (a, x, y) {
  if (a.length === 1) return a;
  a.splice(y, 1, a.splice(x, 1, a[y])[0]);
  return a;
};

swapArrayElements([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 1, 3); //=> [ 1, 4, 3, 2, 5 ]

4. Non-Mutative Method

This method will never change the original array. ES6y version

const swap = (arr, index1, index2) => arr.map((val, idx) => {
  if (idx === index1) return arr[index2];
  if (idx === index2) return arr[index1];
  return val;
});
const foo = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
const swapped = swap(foo, 1, 3); 
console.log(foo); //=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
console.log(swapped); //=> [ 1, 4, 3, 2, 5 ]

Reference

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