Return longest string in array (JavaScript) [duplicate]

Question

So I'm trying to find the longest string in an array of strings. I've done a problem similar to this before where I had to return the length of the longest string. The thing is, my code works and returns 11 when it looks like this:

var long1= 0;

var plorp = ["bbllkw", "oox", "ejjuyyy", "plmiis", "xxxzgpsssa", "xxwwkktt", "znnnnfqknaz", "qqquuhii", "dvvvwz"];

function longestString(arr){
  for (i=0; i<arr.length; i++){
      if (arr[i].length > long1){
        long1= arr[i].length;
      }

  }
  return long1;
}

but, if I change long1= arr[i].length; to long1 = arr[i]; it just returns arr[0] instead. Am I missing something here? The loop seems to be iterating correctly otherwise.

Edit: that is to say, it returns bbllkw.

Answer 1

You can use reduce instead:

var plorp = ["bbllkw", "oox", "ejjuyyy", "plmiis", "xxxzgpsssa", "xxwwkktt", "znnnnfqknaz", "qqquuhii", "dvvvwz"];
var longest = plorp.reduce(function(a, b) { 
  return a.length > b.length ? a : b
}, '');
console.log(longest);

Or ES6 version:

var plorp = ["bbllkw", "oox", "ejjuyyy", "plmiis", "xxxzgpsssa", "xxwwkktt", "znnnnfqknaz", "qqquuhii", "dvvvwz"];
var longest = plorp.reduce((a, b) => a.length > b.length ? a : b, '');
console.log(longest);