How to Reverse an Array in JavaScript

Arrays are a useful data structure in JavaScript because they contain a collection of elements where each one can be accessed by an index.

Sometimes it is useful for the same array to be in the reverse order.

In this article, we will look at how to reverse an array in JavaScript.

How to reverse an array

The easiest way to reverse an array is to use the built-in reverse method.

Let's start with an example array:

	const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

console.log(array);

	[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Now let's call the reverse method on the array:

	const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

array.reverse();

console.log(array);

	[5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

Notice that this method directly mutates the array, so we don't need to assign the result to a new variable.

This can be good in the case that we don't want to create a new array, but it can also be bad if we want to keep the original array.

If you want to keep the original array, you'll have to make a copy of the array using the spread operator:

	const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

const reversedArray = [...array].reverse();

console.log(array);
console.log(reversedArray);

	[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

Conclusion

In this article, we looked at how to reverse an array in JavaScript.

We saw that the easiest way to reverse an array is to use the built-in reverse method, but if you want to keep the original array, make a copy of it, then reverse the copy.

Thanks for reading!

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