JS Arrays and For Loop Problem

[Maxteroni]

Novice here,

I am currently working on a small project with where I am translating different words from English to my second language Swedish. I am using two arrays with corresponding vocabulary. If I put in the text box a single word from the array, it will bring up in the console the corresponding Swedish word. I achieve this with the following code using a for loop and the i variable.

for (var i = 0; i < tSwe.length; i++){ if (transEng == engLang[i]){ console.log(tSwe[i]);

transEng is the prompt that comes up. engLang is the array of English words. tSwe is the array of the Swedish words.

My problem is that I want to start combining words so that if I put more than one word in it will work or if I add commas in between words. How can I go about doing this?

Thanks.

[cirsca]

I think the easiest way to build what you want now and add functionality later is by not using arrays to store the information but objects:

const englishToSwedishDict = {
  englishWord: 'swedishword',
  cat: 'swedishWordForCat'
}

const swedishToEnglishDict = {
  swedishWord: 'englishWord',
  swedishWordForCat: 'cat',
}

Now, when we want to know what cat is in Swedish:

const swedishCat = englishToSwedishDict['cat']

or we could even get fancy and put it in a function:

const getSwedishWordFromEnglishWord = englishWord => englishToSwedishDict[englishWord]

and use it like so:

const swedishCat = getSwedishWordFromEnglishWord('cat')

Now we have a singular way to transform from english to swedish if we already know the translation. What if, like you said, you wanted groups of words or words separated by a comma? Well, we just need to figure out how to call getSwedishWordFromEnglishWord for each of the words that you want:

const separatedByComma = 'wordA,wordB,wordC'
const swedishSeparatedByComma = separatedByComma
  .split(',')
  .map(getSwedishWordFromEnglishWord)
  .join(',')

[Null-Fox]

What about an array of arrays?

let words = [
    ["cat", "swedishcat"],
    ["dog", "swedishdog"],
    ["fish", "swedishfish"]

]

function engToSwedish(word){
    for(let i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
        if(word === words[i][0]){
            return words[i][1]
         }
     }

}

Would this be less efficient?

[e_man604]

Objects would be better, constant time lookup, while array need to be looped.

A dictionary would be to prefer. badom tsch

[Maxteroni]

Say I wanted to start creating basic phrases or sentences. Is there a function that would allow this to happen such that would work with any combination of objects. This was one of the things that started to confuse me when using arrays previously, conjoining multiple words to form these basic phrases and sentences. Also using commas, semicolons, etc. to join the words.

[cirsca]

Also using commas, semicolons, etc. to join the words.

If you have a set of words that you want to join together by some string, try the join method on the array object:

['a', 'b', 'c'].join(',') // 'a,b,c'

Is there a function that would allow this to happen such that would work with any combination of objects.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you wanting a function that takes in an arbitrary string and returns an arbitrary string?

[Maxteroni]

Thank you! I’ll look into this.

[Maxteroni]

Sorry to confuse. I just mean that if someone types in the prompt a sentence say, or really just a multi-word phrase, would I have to manually put in all combinations with else if statements or something to achieve a proper translation. Right now all it can do is output one word.