Remove first and last character python

Remove First and Last Character from String Using Python

To remove the first and last character from a string in Python, the easiest way is to use slicing.

string = "This is a string variable" string_without_first_last_char = string[1:-1] print(string_without_first_last_char) #Output: his is a string variabl

When using string variables in Python, we can easily perform string manipulation to change the value of the string variables.

One such manipulation is to remove characters from a string variable.

With slicing, we can easily get rid of the first and last character from a string. To do so, we need to select all of the elements between the first and last character.

To keep everything between the first and last character, we should pass ‘1’ as the start position and ‘-1’ as the end position to create our slice.

Below is how we can truncate a string and remove the first and last character from a string in Python.

string = "This is a string variable" string_without_first_last_char = string[1:-1] print(string_without_first_last_char) #Output: his is a string variabl

How to Remove the First Character from a String in Python

If you just want to remove the first character from a string in Python, we can adjust our example from above.

To remove the first character in a string using slicing, we know that the first character has index ‘0’. So, to get everything except the first character, we start our slice at position ‘1’ and don’t provide an end position to get everything else in the string.

Below is an example of how to get rid of the first character in a string using Python.

string = "This is a string variable" string_without_first_char = string[1:] print(string_without_first_char) #Output: his is a string variable

How to Remove the Last Character from a String in Python

If you just want to remove the last character from a string in Python, we can adjust our example from above.

You can use slicing to remove the last character from a string in Python in a very similar way. To remove the last character in a string, pass ‘-1’ as the end position.

string = "This is a string variable" string_without_last_char = string[:-1] print(string_without_last_char) #Output: This is a string variabl

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to remove the first and last characters from a string in Python.

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Remove first and last character python

Last updated: Feb 20, 2023
Reading time · 3 min

# Remove first and last characters from a String in Python

Use string slicing to remove the first and last characters from a string, e.g. result = my_str[1:-1] .

The new string will contain a slice of the original string without the first and last characters.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' # ✅ Remove the first and last characters from a string result_1 = my_str[1:-1] print(result_1) # 👉️ 'ppl' # ✅ Remove the first character from a string result_2 = my_str[1:] print(result_2) # 👉️ 'pple' # ✅ Remove the last character from a string result_3 = my_str[:-1] print(result_3) # 👉️ 'appl' 

We used string slicing to remove the first and last characters from a string.

The syntax for string slicing is my_str[start:stop:step] .

Python indexes are zero-based, so the first character in a string has an index of 0 , and the last character has an index of -1 or len(my_str) — 1 .

The slice my_str[1:-1] starts at the character at index 1 and goes up to, but not including the last character in the string.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result_1 = my_str[1:-1] print(result_1) # 👉️ 'ppl' 

# Only removing the first character from the String

If you only need to remove the first character from the string, start at index 1 and go til the end of the string.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result = my_str[1:] print(result) # 👉️ 'pple' 

When the stop index is not specified, the slice goes to the end of the string.

# Only removing the last character from the String

If you only need to remove the last character from the string, omit the start index and specify a stop index of -1 .

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result = my_str[:-1] print(result) # 👉️ 'appl' 

When the start index is not specified, the slice starts at index 0 .

The slice in the example goes up to, but not including the last character in the string.

# Remove first and last characters from a String using strip()

Alternatively, you can use the str.lstrip() and str.rstrip() methods to remove characters from the start and end of the string.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result_1 = my_str.lstrip('a').rstrip('e') print(result_1) # 👉️ 'ppl' result_2 = my_str.lstrip('a') print(result_2) # 👉️ 'pple' result_3 = my_str.rstrip('e') print(result_3) # 👉️ 'appl' # ✅ access string at index to not hard-code the characters result_4 = my_str.lstrip(my_str[0]).rstrip(my_str[-1]) print(result_4) # 👉️ 'ppl' 

The str.lstrip method takes a string containing characters as an argument and returns a copy of the string with the specified leading characters removed.

The str.rstrip method takes a string containing characters as an argument and returns a copy of the string with the specified trailing characters removed.

The methods do not change the original string, they return a new string. Strings are immutable in Python.

You can access the string at index 0 and index -1 to not have to hard-code the characters.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result = my_str.lstrip(my_str[0]).rstrip(my_str[-1]) print(result) # 👉️ 'ppl' 

They remove all occurrences and combinations of the specified character from the start or end of the string.

Copied! 
my_str = 'aaappleeee' result_1 = my_str.lstrip('a').rstrip('e') print(result_1) # 👉️ 'ppl' result_2 = my_str.lstrip('a') print(result_2) # 👉️ 'ppleeee' result_3 = my_str.rstrip('e') print(result_3) # 👉️ 'aaappl' 

# Remove first and last characters from String using removeprefix() and removesuffix()

Alternatively, you can use the str.removeprefix() and str.removesuffix() methods.

Copied! 
my_str = 'apple' result_1 = my_str.removeprefix('a').removesuffix('e') print(result_1) # 👉️ 'ppl' result_2 = my_str.removeprefix('a') print(result_2) # 👉️ 'pple' result_3 = my_str.removesuffix('e') print(result_3) # 👉️ 'appl' 

The str.removeprefix method checks if the string starts with the specified prefix and if it does, the method returns a new string excluding the prefix, otherwise, it returns a copy of the original string.

The str.removesuffix method checks if the string ends with the specified suffix and if it does, the method returns a new string excluding the suffix, otherwise, it returns a copy of the original string.

The difference between str.lstrip and str.removeprefix is that the str.lstrip method removes all combinations of the specified characters, whereas the str.removeprefix method removes only the specified prefix.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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How to Remove the First and Last Character from a String in Python

String manipulation is one of the most common yet basic operations to do in Python.

Thankfully, Python makes it easy to work with strings and do things like remove characters from the beginning and end of a string.

In this post, we’ll look at examples of how to remove the first and last characters from a string in Python.

Removing the First Character

First, let’s start off with our example string:

Now let’s use the slice notation to remove the first character from the string:

The str[1:] notation is used to remove the first character from the string because the first character is at index 0, so we can cut it out by starting at index 1.

We leave the second part of the notation blank so that it reads until the very end of the string.

Removing the Last Character

Similarly, we can use the str[:-1] notation to remove the last character from the string:

The same logic applies here as well.

We are using -1 to tell the compiler to start at the end of the string and go backwards by one character.

We leave the start of the notation blank so it starts from the beginning of the string.

Together, this has the effect of removing the last character from the string.

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to use the slice notation to remove the first and last characters from a string.

Simply passing the str[1:] notation to the slice function will remove the first character from the string, and similarly, passing str[:-1] will remove the last character from the string.

Hopefully, this post has been useful to you.

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