JavaScript - get last character of string

In this article, we would like to show you how to get the last character of a string in JavaScript.

Below we present two solutions on how to do that: 

1. Using substring() method,
2. Using slice() method.

1. String substring() method example

The below example shows how to use .substring() method to get the last character of the text string. 

Runnable example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

var text = '12345';
var substring = text.substring(text.length - 1);

console.log(substring); // 5

Another practical example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

// true means string is empty

console.log( "".substring("".length - 1) === "" ); // empty
console.log( "1".substring("1".length - 1) ); // 1
console.log( "12".substring("12".length - 1) ); // 2
console.log( "123".substring("123".length - 1) ); // 3
console.log( "1234".substring("1234".length - 1) ); // 4
console.log( "12345".substring("12345".length - 1) ); // 5

2. String slice() method example

The below example shows the use of .slice() method with a negative index to get the last character of the text string.

Runnable example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

var text = '12345';
var substring = text.slice(-1);

console.log(substring); // 5

In the second example, we can see that we can also use string slice() with negative indexes on a shorter or empty string which will give us the following results:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

// true means string is empty

console.log( "".slice(-1) === "" ); // empty
console.log( "1".slice(-1) ); // 1
console.log( "12".slice(-1) ); // 2
console.log( "123".slice(-1) ); // 3
console.log( "1234".slice(-1) ); // 4
console.log( "12345".slice(-1) ); // 5

 References

• String.prototype.substring() - MDN Web Docs

• Array.prototype.slice() - MDN Web Docs