How to get the last character of a string in a shell

Question

I have written the following lines to get the last character of a string   str  1 i       str -1   echo   str  i 1    It works for abcd      bash last ch sh abcd      It does not work for abcd      bash last ch sh abcd  array sh assign sh date sh dict sh full path sh last ch sh   It lists the files in the current folder

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I know this is a very old thread  but no one mentioned which to me is the cleanest answer   echo -n  str   tail -c 1   Note the -n is just so the echo doesn t include a newline at the end

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another solution using awk script   last 1 char   echo  str   awk   print substr  0 length 1      last 5 chars   echo  str   awk   print substr  0 length-5 5

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Every answer so far implies the word  shell  in the question equates to Bash   This is how one could do that in a standard Bourne shell   printf  str   tail -c 1

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Single line     str    str -1 1    Now   echo    str    str -1 1

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For portability you can say  quot   s  quot   s    quot   quot      bin sh m bzzzM n bzzzN for s in        vv    w           uu      uu      uu           ab    a b    ab   ab     a  b     ab           cd    c d    cd   cd     c  d     cd           ef    e f    ef   ef     e  f     ef           gh    g h    gh   gh     g  h     gh           ij quot    i quot j    quot ij   quot ij  quot    quot i j quot    quot  ij quot            kl    k l    kl   kl     k  l     kl           mn    m n    mn   mn     m  n     mn    do  case  s in         printf   n             printf    s     quot   s  quot   s    quot   quot         esac done  Output   v   w              u        b   b       b   b        d   d       d   d        f   f       f   f        h   h       h   h     quot    j   j       j   j        l   l       l   l        n   n       n   n

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Try      str       str -1   1     For e g    someone mypc    str  A random string    echo   str  A random string  someone mypc    echo    str       str -1   1     someone mypc    echo    str       str -2   1   g

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expr  str              Or echo   str  -1

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echo  str   cut -c       str      is a good approach

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That s one of the reasons why you need to quote your variables  echo  quot   str  i 1  quot   Otherwise  bash expands the variable and in this case does globbing before printing out  It is also better to quote the parameter to the script  in case you have a matching filename   sh lash ch sh  abcde    Also see the order of expansions in the bash reference manual  Variables are expanded before the filename expansion  To get the last character you should just use -1 as the index since the negative indices count from the end of the string  echo  quot   str  -1  quot   The space after the colon     is REQUIRED  This approach will not work without the space

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For anyone interested in a pure POSIX method  https   github com spiralofhope shell-random blob master live sh scripts string-fetch-last-character sh    usr bin env  sh  string fetch last character       length of string    string    last character  quot  string quot    i 1   until    i -eq  quot  length of string quot     do     last character  quot   last character    quot      i     i   1      done    printf    s    quot  last character quot      string fetch last character   quot  string quot

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Per  perreal  quoting variables is important  but because I read this post like 5 times before finding a simpler approach to the question at hand in the comments     str  abcd   echo    str  -1     Output     str  abcd   echo    str  -1     Output     Thanks to everyone who participated in this above  I ve appropriately added  1 s throughout the thread

[string] How to get the last character of a string in a shell?

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