TypeScript - get last 2 characters of string

In this article, we would like to show you how to get the last 2 characters of a string in TypeScript.

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 2 characters of the text string. 

Runnable example:

const text: string = '12345';
const substring: string = text.substring(text.length - 2);

console.log(substring); // 45

Output:

45

Another practical example:

// true means string is empty

console.log(''.substring(''.length - 2) === ''); // empty
console.log('1'.substring('1'.length - 2)); // 1
console.log('12'.substring('12'.length - 2)); // 12
console.log('123'.substring('123'.length - 2)); // 23
console.log('1234'.substring('1234'.length - 2)); // 34
console.log('12345'.substring('12345'.length - 2)); // 45

Output:

true
1
12
23
34
45

2. String slice() method example

The below example shows the use of .slice() method with a negative index to get the last 2 characters of the text string.

Runnable example:

const text: string = '12345';
const substring: string = text.slice(-2);

console.log(substring); // 45

Output:

45

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:

// true means string is empty

console.log(''.slice(-2) === ''); // empty
console.log('1'.slice(-2)); // 1
console.log('12'.slice(-2)); // 12
console.log('123'.slice(-2)); // 23
console.log('1234'.slice(-2)); // 34
console.log('12345'.slice(-2)); // 45

Output:

true
1
12
23
34
45