C# Palindrome Method - Dot Net Perls

Palindrome MethodDevelop an algorithm that determines if a string is a palindrome. Loop over a string in both directions.

This page was last reviewed on Feb 18, 2023.

Palindrome. Palindromes can be read in both directions. A palindrome has the same letters on both ends of the string. It is a form of word puzzle.

An example palindrome. The string "civic" is a palindrome, but "perls" is not. How can you determine if a string is a palindrome in the C# language?

Example. This program introduces the IsPalindrome boolean method. In the method body, we determine the minimum and maximum indexes inside the string.

Then We scan from the minimum forward, and from the maximum backward, at the same time.

And If the characters are different, we return false. If we are done scanning, we return true.

bool

Note If your input strings are always lowercase, it would be better to remove the char.ToLower transformations.

char.ToLower

civic = True deified = True deleveled = True devoved = True dewed = True Hannah = True kayak = True level = True madam = True racecar = True radar = True redder = True refer = True repaper = True reviver = True rotator = True rotor = True sagas = True solos = True sexes = True stats = True tenet = True Dot = False Net = False Perls = False Is = False Not = False A = True Palindrome = False = True

Sentences. This program is the same as the simpler palindrome method except for some small changes. The important change is inside IsPalindrome. There are two additional while-loops.

While

Note If a char is determined to be a non-letter non-digit character, we begin skipping forward or backward to one that should be checked.

So Punctuation and spaces do not affect the result—sentences are handled correctly.

Char

using System; class Program { /// <summary> /// Determines whether the string is a palindrome. /// </summary> public static bool IsPalindrome(string value) { int min = 0; int max = value.Length - 1; while (true) { if (min > max) { return true; } char a = value[min]; char b = value[max]; // Scan forward for a while invalid. while (!char.IsLetterOrDigit(a)) { min++; if (min > max) { return true; } a = value[min]; } // Scan backward for b while invalid. while (!char.IsLetterOrDigit(b)) { max--; if (min > max) { return true; } b = value[max]; } if (char.ToLower(a) != char.ToLower(b)) { return false; } min++; max--; } } static void Main() { string[] array = { "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.", "A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota.", "Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.", "Dammit, I'm mad!", "Delia saw I was ailed.", "Desserts, I stressed!", "Draw, O coward!", "Lepers repel.", "Live not on evil.", "Lonely Tylenol.", "Murder for a jar of red rum.", "Never odd or even.", "No lemon, no melon.", "Senile felines.", "So many dynamos!", "Step on no pets.", "Was it a car or a cat I saw?", "Dot Net Perls is not a palindrome.", "Why are you reading this?", "This article is not useful.", "...", "...Test" }; foreach (string value in array) { Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", value, IsPalindrome(value)); } } }

A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. = True A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota. = True Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic. = True Dammit, I'm mad! = True Delia saw I was ailed. = True Desserts, I stressed! = True Draw, O coward! = True Lepers repel. = True Live not on evil. = True Lonely Tylenol. = True Murder for a jar of red rum. = True Never odd or even. = True No lemon, no melon. = True Senile felines. = True So many dynamos! = True Step on no pets. = True Was it a car or a cat I saw? = True Dot Net Perls is not a palindrome. = False Why are you reading this? = False This article is not useful. = False ... = True ...Test = False

Performance. What is the advantage of using two sub-loops to skip forward and back? This approach means you do not need to allocate any new strings.

And You can check the original string data without converting it. Avoiding string allocations makes a program faster.

Info A slower approach strips all spaces and punctuation from the source string. Then, you could use the simpler palindrome method.

A summary. We introduced a simple C# method that tests for palindromes. Many palindromes are composed of multiple words and have spaces and punctuation. These can all be tested.

Dot Net Perls is a collection of tested code examples. Pages are continually updated to stay current, with code correctness a top priority.

Sam Allen is passionate about computer languages. In the past, his work has been recommended by Apple and Microsoft and he has studied computers at a selective university in the United States.

This page was last updated on Feb 18, 2023 (simplify).

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