JavaScript - 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 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 2 characters of the text string. 

Runnable example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

var text = '12345';
var substring = text.substring(text.length - 2);

console.log(substring); // 45

Another practical example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

// 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

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:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

var text = '12345';
var substring = text.slice(-2);

console.log(substring); // 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:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

// 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

 References

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

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