Anagram Checker

Checks if two strings are anagrams, ignoring case, spaces, and non-alphanumeric characters

Problem Overview

🔤 What are Anagrams?
Anagrams are words or phrases formed by rearranging letters of another word, using all original letters exactly once. Think "listen" → "silent" or "The Morse Code" → "Here come dots"!

This Implementation Handles:
Case-insensitive matching ("Listen" = "SILENT")
Whitespace and punctuation removal ("Tea!" = "eat")
Mixed alphanumeric characters ("a1b2" = "2b1a")
Input validation and error handling
Two Algorithmic Approaches:
Sorting Method: Sort both strings and compare (simple but slower)
Hash Map Method: Count character frequencies (optimal for large inputs)

💡 Real-World Applications:

Word games and puzzles
Cryptography and code-breaking
Data deduplication algorithms
String similarity detection

Concepts

string manipulationsortinghash mapsregular expressions

Complexity Analysis

Time:O(n log n) for sorting, O(n) for hash map

Space:O(n)

Solutions

areAnagrams

Time: O(n log n) | Space: O(n)

export function areAnagrams(str1: string, str2: string): boolean {
  if (typeof str1 !== 'string' || typeof str2 !== 'string') throw new Error("Inputs must be strings");
  const anagramPreparer = (str: string): string => str.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]/g, '').split('').sort().join('');
  return anagramPreparer(str1) === anagramPreparer(str2);
}

Examples & Test Cases

#1Classic pair

Input:

[
  "listen",
  "silent"
]

Output:true

#2Non-anagram

Input:

[
  "hello",
  "world"
]

Output:false

#3With punctuation

Input:

[
  "Tea!",
  "eat"
]

Output:true

#4Empty strings

Input:

[
  "",
  ""
]

Output:true

#5With numbers

Input:

[
  "rat1",
  "tar1"
]

Output:true

#6With spaces

Input:

[
  "a b c",
  "cba!"
]

Output:true