Find the Longest Word in a Sentence
In this challenge, you are required to write a function that takes a sentence as input and returns the longest word within it. A sentence is a string of words separated by spaces and may contain punctuation marks.
This task is commonly encountered in natural language processing (NLP) and text analysis applications, such as summarizing content, analyzing document complexity, or identifying important keywords in a passage of text.
To successfully complete the task, your function should handle the following considerations:
Handling Punctuation
The sentence may contain punctuation marks such as periods (.), commas (,), exclamation marks (!), question marks (?), colons (:), and semicolons (;). Your solution should ignore these punctuation marks and consider only alphanumeric words.
Word Separation:
Words in the sentence will be separated by spaces. Consecutive spaces or trailing spaces should not impact the result.
Tiebreaker Rule:
If there are multiple words with the same length, the function should return the first longest word found in the sentence.
Edge Cases:
The input will always be a valid string. The function should be able to handle sentences with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. The function should not fail for sentences with only one word.
Example Usage:
console.log(longestWord("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."));// Expected output: "jumps"console.log(longestWord("Programming is fun!"));// Expected output: "Programming"console.log(longestWord("To be, or not to be, that is the question."));// Expected output: "question"
Did you know?
The first computer bug was a moth found in a Harvard Mark II computer.
Test Cases
Input:
"Programming is fun!"
Expected Output:
"Programming"