How to Get the First and Last Character of a String in Javascript

In this tutorial, you will learn how to get the first and last character of a string in javascript. A string is formed with the help of letters, numbers, and special characters. This means the very first or last character can be or cannot be a letter, number, or special character.

There are numerous ways to get the first and last character of a string. A string consists of multiple characters and these characters in a string have a 0-based index. To get a character by index, we can make use of the charAt() method.

The length property of a string returns the number of total characters in that string. To get the index of the last character in the string, we just need to subtract 1 from the length. The first character will be at index 0 by default.

In the following example, we have one global variable that holds a string. Upon click of a button, we will get the first and last character of the string and display the result on the screen.  Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.

HTML & CSS

  • We have 3 elements in the HTML file (div, button, and h1). The div element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements.
  • The innerText for the button element is “Get” and for the h1 element, it is “Result”.
  • We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our style.css stylesheet inside the head element.
  • We have also included our javascript file script.js with a script tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
  <title>Document</title>
</head>

<body>

  <div class="container">    
    <button>Get</button>
    <h1>Result</h1>
  </div>

  <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>

</html>
.container {        
    text-align: center;
}

button {
  margin-top: 10px;
  padding: 10px 20px;
}

Javascript

  • We have selected the button element and h1 element using the document.querySelector() method and stored them in btnGet and output variables respectively.
  • We have attached a click event listener to the button element.
  • We have a global variable myString which holds a string as its value.
  • In the event handler function, we are calling the charAt() method and passing 0 as a parameter to get the first character of the string. The first character is stored in the first variable.
  • We are getting the index of the last character by subtracting 1 from the length of the string and storing the index number in the lastCharIndex variable.
  • We are calling the charAt() method and passing lastCharIndex as a parameter to get the last character of the string. The last character is stored in the last variable.
  • We are forming a template string by using the last and first variables and storing that in the result variable.
  • We are displaying the result in the h1 element using the innerText property.
let btnGet = document.querySelector("button");
let output = document.querySelector("h1");

let myString = "Hello world";

btnGet.addEventListener("click", () => {
  let first = myString.charAt(0);
  let lastCharIndex = myString.length - 1;
  let last = myString.charAt(lastCharIndex);
  let result = `First: ${first} - Last: ${last}`;
  output.innerText = result;
});