How to remove first two and last two chars in a string?

Question

Is there an easy way to remove the first 2 and last 2 chars in a string?

I have this string:

\nTESTSTRING\n

How could I easily delete them?

Answer 1

Did you try:

 myString.Trim();

Answer 2

myString = myString.SubString(2, myString.Length - 4);

Answer 3

str = str.SubString(2,str.Length-4)

Of course you must test that the string contains more than 4 chars before doing this. Also in your case it seems that \n is a single newline character. If all you want to do is remove leading and trailing whitespaces, you should use

str.Trim()

as suggested by Charles

Answer 4

// Test string
var str = "\nTESTSTRING\n";

// Number of characters to remove on each end
var n = 2;

// Slimmed string
string slimmed;

if (str.Length > n * 2)
    slimmed = str.Substring(n, str.Length - (n * 2));
else
    slimmed = string.Empty;

// slimmed = "ESTSTRIN"

Answer 5

Papuccino1,

If you create an extension method like this:

 public static class StringEnumerator {

    public static IEnumerable<String> GetLines(this String source) {
        String line = String.Empty;
        StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(source);

        while ((line = stringReader.ReadLine()) != null) {
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(line)) {
                yield return line;
            }
        }
    }
}

your code will be simplified and will be safer (not depending on dangerous index):

class Program {

    static void Main(string[] args) {
        String someText = "\nTESTSTRING\n";
        String firstLine = someText.GetLines().First();
    }
}

I hope this helps,

Ricardo Lacerda Castelo Branco