Get last character in string

Question

I want to get the last character in a string MY WAY - 1) Get last index 2) Get character at last index, as a STRING. After that I will compare the string with another, but I won't include that part of code here. I tried the code below and I get a strange number instead. I am using ruby 1.8.7.

Why is this happening and how do I do it ?

line = "abc;" last_index = line.length-1 puts "last index = #{last_index}" last_char = line[last_index] puts last_char 

Output-

last index = 3 59 

Ruby docs told me that array slicing works this way -

a = "hello there" a[1] #=> "e" 

But, in my code it does not.

Answer 1

UPDATE: I keep getting constant up votes on this, hence the edit. Using [-1, 1] is correct, however a better looking solution would be using just [-1]. Check Oleg Pischicov's answer.

line[-1] # => "c" 

Original Answer

In ruby you can use [-1, 1] to get last char of a string. Here:

line = "abc;" # => "abc;" line[-1, 1] # => ";"  teststr = "some text" # => "some text" teststr[-1, 1] # => "t" 

Explanation: Strings can take a negative index, which count backwards from the end of the String, and an length of how many characters you want (one in this example).

Using String#slice as in OP's example: (will work only on ruby 1.9 onwards as explained in Yu Hau's answer)

line.slice(line.length - 1) # => ";" teststr.slice(teststr.length - 1) # => "t" 

Let's go nuts!!!

teststr.split('').last # => "t" teststr.split(//)[-1] # => "t" teststr.chars.last # => "t" teststr.scan(/.$/)[0] # => "t" teststr[/.$/] # => "t" teststr[teststr.length-1] # => "t"