How to get the last char of a string in PHP?

Question

I need to get the last character of a string. Say I have \"testers\" as input string and I want the result to be \"s\". how can I do that in PHP?

Answer 1

substr($string, -1) 

Answer 2

From PHP 7.1 you can do this (Accepted rfc for negative string offsets):

<?php
$silly = 'Mary had a little lamb';
echo $silly[-20];
echo $silly{-6};
echo $silly[-3];
echo $silly[-15];
echo $silly[-13];
echo $silly[-1];
echo $silly[-4];
echo $silly{-10};
echo $silly[-4];
echo $silly[-8];
echo $silly{3}; // <-- this will be deprecated in PHP 7.4
die();

I'll let you guess the output.

Also, I added this to xenonite's performance code with these results:

substr() took 7.0334868431091seconds

array access took 2.3111131191254seconds

Direct string access (negative string offsets) took 1.7971360683441seconds

Answer 3

substr("testers", -1); // returns "s"

Or, for multibytes strings :

substr("multibyte string…", -1); // returns "…"

Answer 4

Remember, if you have a string which was read as a line from a text file using the fgets() function, you need to use substr($string, -3, 1) so that you get the actual character and not part of the CRLF (Carriage Return Line Feed).

I don't think the person who asked the question needed this, but for me, I was having trouble getting that last character from a string from a text file so I'm sure others will come across similar problems.

Answer 5

Or by direct string access:

$string[strlen($string)-1];

Note that this doesn't work for multibyte strings. If you need to work with multibyte string, consider using the mb_* string family of functions.

As of PHP 7.1.0 negative numeric indices are also supported, e.g just $string[-1];

Answer 6

As of PHP 7.1.0, negative string offsets are also supported. So, if you keep up with the times, you can access the last character in the string like this:

$str[-1]

DEMO

At the request of a @mickmackusa, I supplement my answer with possible ways of application:

<?php

$str='abcdef';
var_dump($str[-2]); // => string(1) "e"

$str[-3]='.';
var_dump($str);     // => string(6) "abc.ef"

var_dump(isset($str[-4]));  // => bool(true)

var_dump(isset($str[-10])); // => bool(false)