Trim last character from a string

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I have a string say

"Hello! world!" 

I want to do a trim or a remove to take out the ! off world but not off Hello.

15 Answers

In .NET 5 / C# 8:

You can write the code marked as the answer as:

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string TrimLastCharacters(this string str) => string.IsNullOrEmpty(str) ? str : str.TrimEnd(str[^1]);
}

However, as mentioned in the answer, this removes all occurrences of that last character. If you only want to remove the last character you should instead do:

    public static string RemoveLastCharacter(this string str) => string.IsNullOrEmpty(str) ? str : str[..^1];

A quick explanation for the new stuff in C# 8:

The ^ is called the "index from end operator". The .. is called the "range operator". ^1 is a shortcut for arr.length - 1. You can get all items after the first character of an array with arr[1..] or all items before the last with arr[..^1]. These are just a few quick examples. For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csharp-8, "Indices and ranges" section.

Very easy and simple:

str = str.Remove( str.Length - 1 );

An example Extension class to simplify this: -

internal static class String
{
    public static string TrimEndsCharacter(this string target, char character) => target?.TrimLeadingCharacter(character).TrimTrailingCharacter(character);
    public static string TrimLeadingCharacter(this string target, char character) => Match(target?.Substring(0, 1), character) ? target.Remove(0,1) : target;
    public static string TrimTrailingCharacter(this string target, char character) => Match(target?.Substring(target.Length - 1, 1), character) ? target.Substring(0, target.Length - 1) : target;

    private static bool Match(string value, char character) => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(value) && value[0] == character;
}

Usage

"!Something!".TrimLeadingCharacter('X'); // Result '!Something!' (No Change)
"!Something!".TrimTrailingCharacter('S'); // Result '!Something!' (No Change)
"!Something!".TrimEndsCharacter('g'); // Result '!Something!' (No Change)

"!Something!".TrimLeadingCharacter('!'); // Result 'Something!' (1st Character removed)
"!Something!".TrimTrailingCharacter('!'); // Result '!Something' (Last Character removed)
"!Something!".TrimEndsCharacter('!'); // Result 'Something'  (End Characters removed)

"!!Something!!".TrimLeadingCharacter('!'); // Result '!Something!!' (Only 1st instance removed)
"!!Something!!".TrimTrailingCharacter('!'); // Result '!!Something!' (Only Last instance removed)
"!!Something!!".TrimEndsCharacter('!'); // Result '!Something!'  (Only End instances removed)

Slightly modified version of @Damian Leszczyński - Vash that will make sure that only a specific character will be removed.

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string TrimLastCharacter(this string str, char character)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(str) || str[str.Length - 1] != character)
        {
            return str;
        }
        return str.Substring(0, str.Length - 1);
    }
}
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