JavaScript - remove last 2 characters from string

In this article, we're going to have a look at how to remove the last 2 characters from the string in JavaScript.

This approach allows getting substring by using negative indexes. So by using 0 and -2 indexes as the range we get <0, text.length - 2> text range. 

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var text = 'abcde';

var substring = text.slice(0, -2);

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console.log(substring); // abc

This is an alternative approach to slice method based solution.

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var text = 'abcde';

var substring = text.substring(0, text.length - 2);

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console.log(substring); // abc

There is another trick that allows replacing all characters that match expression conditions. By using .{0,2}$ pattern we match any 2 characters (up to 2 characters) that are located at the end of the string.

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var text = 'abcde';

var substring = text.replace(/.{0,2}$/, '');

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console.log(substring); // abc