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

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?

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

Or, for multibyte strings :

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

substr($string, -1) 

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];

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 https://stackoverflow.com/users/3996393/xenonite">xenonite's</a> performance code with these results:

> substr() took 7.0334868431091seconds

> array access took 2.3111131191254seconds

> Direct string access (negative string offsets) took 1.7971360683441seconds

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)

I can't leave comments, but in regard to FastTrack's answer, also remember that the line ending may be only single character. I would suggest

substr(trim($string), -1)

EDIT: My code below was edited by someone, making it not do what I indicated. I have restored my original code and changed the wording to make it more clear.

trim (or rtrim) will remove all whitespace, so if you do need to check for a space, tab, or other whitespace, manually replace the various line endings first:

$order = array("\r\n", "\n", "\r");
$string = str_replace($order, '', $string);
$lastchar = substr($string, -1);

I'd advise to go for Gordon's solution as it is more performant than substr():

<?php 

$string = 'abcdef';
$repetitions = 10000000;

echo "\n\n";
echo "----------------------------------\n";
echo $repetitions . " repetitions...\n";
echo "----------------------------------\n";
echo "\n\n";

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0; $i<$repetitions; $i++)
    $x = substr($string, -1);

echo "substr() took " . (microtime(true) - $start) . "seconds\n";

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0; $i<$repetitions; $i++)
    $x = $string[strlen($string)-1];

echo "array access took " . (microtime(true) - $start) . "seconds\n";

die();

outputs something like

 ---------------------------------- 
 10000000 repetitions...
 ----------------------------------
 
 substr() took 2.0285921096802seconds 
 array access took 1.7474739551544seconds

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.

You can find last character using php many ways like substr() and mb_substr().

>If you’re using multibyte character encodings like UTF-8, use mb_substr instead of substr

Here i can show you both example:

<?php
    echo substr("testers", -1);
    echo mb_substr("testers", -1);
?>

LIVE DEMO

A string in different languages including C sharp and PHP is also considered an array of characters.

Knowing that in theory array operations should be faster than string ones you could do,

$foo = "bar";


$lastChar = strlen($foo) -1;
echo $foo[$lastChar];

$firstChar = 0;
echo $foo[$firstChar];

However, standard array functions like

count();

will not work on a string.

Use substr() with a negative number for the 2nd argument.$newstring = substr($string1, -1);

Siemano, get only php files from selected directory:

$dir    = '/home/zetdoa/ftp/domeny/MY_DOMAIN/projekty/project';
$files = scandir($dir, 1);


foreach($files as $file){
  $n = substr($file, -3);
  if($n == 'php'){
    echo $file.'<br />';
  }
}