Problem 649. Return the first and last characters of a character array

Created by @bmtran (Bryant Tran)

Solve Later

Return the first and last characters of a character array, concatenated together. If there is only one character in the character array, the function should give that character back twice since it is both the first and last character of the character array.
Example:
   stringfirstandlast('boring example') = 'be'

Solve

Solution Stats

20305 Solutions
11209 Solvers

Last Solution submitted on Oct 30, 2025

Last 200 Solutions

Problem Comments

4 Comments

4 Comments

Show 1 older comment

Rik on 19 Jan 2021

There is a difference between string and char array since R2016b. Before that they could be used interchangeably, but now that is no longer true (although I believe some doc pages are still not careful about this).

goc3 on 20 Jan 2021

The title and description have been updated, along with a few new test cases.

Bryce Lewis on 5 May 2021

Wow this actually is such a great question

ML on 28 Jan 2023

good problem

Solution Comments

Show comments

Problem Recent Solvers11209

Problem Tags

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!

Problem 649. Return the first and last characters of a character array

Solution Stats

Last 200 Solutions

Problem Comments

Solution Comments

Problem Recent Solvers11209

Suggested Problems

More from this Author56

Problem Tags

Community Treasure Hunt

Problem 649. Return the first and last characters of a character array

Solution Stats

Last 200 Solutions

Problem Comments

Solution Comments

Problem Recent Solvers11209

Suggested Problems

More from this Author56

Problem Tags

Community Treasure Hunt

Players