Reverse String in Visual Basic

Welcome to the Reverse String in Visual Basic page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

Public Module ReverseString
  Public Sub Main(args() As String)
    Dim input = String.Empty
    If args IsNot Nothing Then
      input = String.Join(" ", args)
    End If

    System.Console.WriteLine(ReverseString(input))
  End Sub

    Public Function ReverseString(ByVal input As String) As String
        Dim chars() As Char = input.ToCharArray()
        Array.Reverse(chars)
        Return New String(chars)
    End Function
End Module

Reverse String in Visual Basic was written by:

• AaronLenoir
• Andrew Reid
• rzuckerm

This article was written by:

• Andrew Reid
• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

Note: The solution shown above is the current solution in the Sample Programs repository as of May 16 2023 12:29:09. The solution was first committed on May 04 2018 23:43:40. The documentation was last updated on May 15 2023 15:51:23. As a result, documentation below may be outdated.

How to Implement the Solution

Let's start by looking at the complete algorithm to reverse a string in Visual Basic.

As we can see, VB.NET is a structured language. In other words, there's a very strong focus on code blocks and control flow structures.

Our first code block is the module declaration. In this case, we've declared a public module called ReverseString. If other libraries needed access to this module, they could simply import it by name.

The Main() Function

Next, we have our typical main function declaration. Of course, in VB.NET, we call them subroutines rather than functions, as indicated by the Sub keyword.

The first thing we do in our Main function is create a variable named input to store the value to be reversed.

Public Sub Main(args() As String)
    Dim input = String.Empty

We then need to populate the input variable from the value entered at the command prompt. We can use an array of command line arguments using args() as the paramater in Main() As input with spaces will be treated as multiple arguments in the args() array we need to build them into the single string input.

If args IsNot Nothing Then
    input = String.Join(" ", args)
End If

We first check that there are arguments to join, and if there are join them with the String.Join() function, which takes an array of args and joins them together with a space " " between them, thereby recreating what was entered at the command line.

Finally, we output to the console with the System.Console.Writeline function.

System.Console.WriteLine(ReverseString(input))

Here we call the ReverseString() function with input as our argument. We will see below how ReverseString() operates and returns to us the reversed string. The reversed string is then passed into the WriteLine function and it is output to the console.

The ReverseString() function

Let's take a look at how this function reverses a string.

Public Function ReverseString(ByVal input As String) As String
    Dim chars() As Char = input.ToCharArray()
    Array.Reverse(chars)
    Return New String(chars)
End Function

We take in the value to be reversed into a local variable named input. In order to reverse it we need to convert the string variable input into a character array named chars().

'i.e.: ['H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', ',', ' ', 'W', 'o', 'r', 'l', 'd', '!'] 
Dim chars() As Char = input.ToCharArray()

The character array chars can be reversed using the the Array.Reverse() function

'i.e.: ['!', 'd', 'l', 'r', 'o', ',W, ' ', ',', 'o', 'l', 'l', 'e', 'H']
Array.Reverse(chars)

Finally, the character array chars is converted/combined into a string and returned.

Return New String(chars)

This function executes correctly with any ASCII string. I also executes with an empty string as input.

How to Run the Solution

With our solution implemented, we should probably give it a run. Perhaps the easiest way to run the solution is to copy it into an online VB.NET compiler.

Alternatively, we can run the solution using Microsoft's very own Visual Studio. Of course, I'm not sure of it's support on platforms beyond Windows. Don't forget to grab a copy of the Reverse String in Visual Basic .NET solution.