How to get the last character of a string in a shell?

Question

I have written the following lines to get the last character of a string:

str=$1
i=$((${#str}-1))
echo ${str:$i:1}

It works for abcd/

Answer 1

I know this is a very old thread, but no one mentioned which to me is the cleanest answer:

echo -n $str | tail -c 1

Note the -n is just so the echo doesn't include a newline at the end.

Answer 2

Every answer so far implies the word "shell" in the question equates to Bash.

This is how one could do that in a standard Bourne shell:

printf $str | tail -c 1

Answer 3

expr $str : '.*\(.\)'

Or

echo ${str: -1}

Answer 4

Try:

"${str:$((${#str}-1)):1}"

For e.g.:

someone@mypc:~$ str="A random string*"; echo "$str"
A random string*
someone@mypc:~$ echo "${str:$((${#str}-1)):1}"
*
someone@mypc:~$ echo "${str:$((${#str}-2)):1}"
g