List Inverter

Reverses the characters within every item of a separator-delimited list, so "hello" becomes "olleh", while the order of the items themselves is unchanged. A free online tool from Staaarter, right in your browser.

Runs locallyUpdated 2026-07-27

Overview

Introduction

Reversing text inside every item of a list by hand, one item at a time, is tedious and only gets more error-prone the longer the list.

List Inverter reverses the characters within every item automatically in one pass, leaving the order of the items themselves untouched.

What Is List Inverter?

A per-item text-reversal tool: every item's characters are reversed, but which item comes first, second, third, and so on never changes.

It's easy to confuse with two similarly-named tools: List Reverser (reverses item order, not characters) and List Mirror (appends a reversed copy of the item order, also not characters). This tool is the only one of the three that touches character content.

How List Inverter Works

The input is split into items on the resolved separator, and each item's characters are reversed by spreading the string into an array of Unicode code points, calling Array.prototype.reverse(), and joining back into a string.

The reversed items are rejoined using the same separator and delimiter as the input, in their original order.

When To Use List Inverter

Use it to reverse text in every item of a list at once, for word games, puzzles, or obfuscating a list of strings.

It's also useful for checking whether a list of words happens to contain palindromes, since a palindrome reads identically before and after inversion.

Features

Advantages

  • Correctly handles most Unicode characters by reversing code points rather than raw UTF-16 units, avoiding common mojibake from split("").
  • Preserves item order and count exactly, only the text inside each item changes.
  • Works with any configured separator, not just newline-delimited lists.

Limitations

  • Only reverses characters within items; it never reorders items, use List Reverser for that.
  • Complex emoji built from multiple combined code points (like flag or family emoji sequences) may still not visually reverse as a single unit.

Examples

Reverse characters in each item

Input

hello
world

Output

olleh
dlrow

Each item's characters are reversed independently; item order ("hello" then "world") stays the same.

Reverse a comma list of words

Input

cat,dog,bird

Output

tac, god, drib

Each comma-separated item has its own characters reversed, then the result is rejoined with the readable ", " comma format.

Best Practices & Notes

Best Practices

  • Use List Reverser instead if you actually want to change which item comes first, not the characters inside items.
  • Trim items first with List Function Applier if leading/trailing whitespace is making the reversed output look odd.

Developer Notes

Character reversal uses [...item].reverse().join("") rather than item.split("").reverse().join(""), spreading a string into an array iterates by Unicode code point rather than raw UTF-16 code unit, which avoids corrupting most multi-byte characters during reversal.

List Inverter Use Cases

  • Reversing text in every entry of a word list for a word game or puzzle
  • Quickly obfuscating a list of strings for a simple visual scramble
  • Checking a list of words for palindromes by comparing original and inverted output

Common Mistakes

  • Confusing this with List Reverser and expecting item order to change; it never does here.
  • Confusing this with List Mirror and expecting the list to double in length; it doesn't, item count stays the same.
  • Assuming all emoji reverse cleanly; most do, but some multi-code-point sequences may not.

Tips

  • Run List Reverser first if you want both item order and item characters reversed.
  • Compare the input and output side by side to quickly spot palindromic items in your list.

References

Frequently Asked Questions