Wordle validation function

Ever heard about the wordle game? It’s an easy and pretty addictive word game. Last time I found a lot of programming-related videos with this game. And I decided to make my own implementation (rather a clone) of it.

The hardest point of making it was to create a simple algorithm that validates the given input and compares it with a target word. First, I have to mention the rules of the game, so you can have an overview of what this validation may look like.

• User has to guess a 5-letter word,
• There are six tries,
• After each guess, the tiles with letters will change the color according to the validation.

And the validation options are:

• The letter is in the correct spot (position),
• The letter is in the word, but the spot (position) is incorrect,
• The letter is not in the word.

The main difficulty for me was handling the words with multiple same letters. For example comma, gamma, brass, etc. So for example, if a target word is young, and the user typed groom, only the first letter “o” should be validated and shown as in the word. The second letter “o” should be validated as not in the word. In this scenario, it’s a correct hint for the user that there’s only one letter “o” in the target word.

Solution

function getValidationArray(guess: string, target: string): string[] {
    const length = target.length;
    const output = Array.from({ length: length }, (v) => '-');

    for (let i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        if (guess[i] === target[i]) {
            output[i] = 'X';
            target = target.replace(guess[i], '-');
        }

        if (target.includes(guess[i]) && output[i] === '-') {
            output[i] = 'O';
            target = target.replace(guess[i], '-');
        }

    }
    return output;
}

The solution above may look clunky or cumbersome. It takes two strings as arguments and outputs the array with characters according to the validation. In my approach, I wanted to have an array with validation, so I could use this array to render the validation component. I will write about my wordle-clone in the next article.

getValidationArray('karma', 'gamma'); // output ['-', 'X', '-', 'X', 'X']
getValidationArray('guess', 'guess'); // output ['X', 'X', 'X', 'X', 'X']
getValidationArray('boozy', 'jaunt'); // output ['-', '-', '-', '-', '-']

I covered this solution with a few tests and seems that it’s validating letters correctly.