Removing the first and last character from a string in Python

Learn, how to remove the first and last character from a given string in Python.

We can remove the first and last character of a string by using the slice notation [ ] with 1:-1 as an argument.

• 1 represents second character index (included).

• -1 represents last character index (excluded) .

Here is an example:

str = "How are you"

print(str[1:-1])

Output:

"ow are yo"

Alternatively, we can also use the lstrip() and rstrip() methods like this

str = "How are you"

strippedString = str.lstrip("H").rstrip("u")

print (strippedString) # "ow are yo"

Another example:

name = "/apple/"
strippedString = name.lstrip("/").rstrip("/")

print(strippedString) #  "apple"