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Length of Last Word

Published at25 Jul 2026
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Given a string s consisting of words and spaces, return the length of the last word in the string. A word is a maximal substring consisting of non-space characters.

Trim trailing spaces first, then find the last space character to identify the last word. Alternatively, split by spaces and take the last non-empty element.

Time complexity is O(n) and space is O(1). The solution should handle leading and trailing spaces correctly.

Example Input & Output

Example 1
Input
"a "
Output
1
Explanation

Last word 'a' has 1

Example 2
Input
"hello"
Output
5
Explanation

Single word

Example 3
Input
""
Output
0
Explanation

Empty string

Example 4
Input
" fly me to the moon "
Output
4
Explanation

Last word 'moon' has 4

Example 5
Input
"Hello World"
Output
5
Explanation

Last word 'World' has 5 letters

Algorithm Flow

Recommendation Algorithm Flow for Length of Last Word
Recommendation Algorithm Flow for Length of Last Word

Solution Approach

function solution(s) {
  s = s.trim();
  var lastSpace = s.lastIndexOf(' ');
  return s.length - lastSpace - 1;
}

Best Answers

java
class Solution {
    public int solution(String s) {
        s=s.trim();return s.length()-s.lastIndexOf(' ')-1;
    }
}