How to Get Character from String in Javascript

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To get a character from a string in JavaScript, use the charAt() method. The String charAt() is a built-in JavaScript function that returns a character from a string at the specified index.

Syntax

charAt(index)

Arguments

The charAt() function takes am index. The index is what we need to pass, which is between 0 and string.length-1. If we pass an index that is not valid, then it will return the first character from the string. The default value of this method is 0.

Return value

The charAt() function returns a string which is from UTF-16 code unit.if passed index is greater than string.length-1, it will return empty string.

Example

const string = "Tony stark is greatest avenger ever";
console.log("showing index wise character");

// default index 0
console.log("index 0 : ", string.charAt());

console.log("index 0 : ", string.charAt(0));
console.log("index 1 : ", string.charAt(1));
console.log("index 2 : ", string.charAt(2));
console.log("index 3 : ", string.charAt(3));

// Not valid index number
console.log("index 23223 : ", string.charAt(23223));

Output

showing index wise character
index 0 : T
index 0 : T
index 1 : o
index 2 : n
index 3 : y
index 23223 :

In the first example, we pass nothing in the charAt() method, so by default, it will take an index 0,

In the second example, it will return the first character from the string, which is “T“.

In another example, we pass a valid index number so that it will return a character based on that index. Finally, in the last example, we give an index that is not valid so that it will return an empty string.

Get character from string using for loop

We can also get a character from a string by iterating that string precisely like an array using for loop.

const string = "Tony stark";

for (let i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
 console.log(`index ${i} : `, string[i])
}

Output

index 0 : T
index 1 : o
index 2 : n
index 3 : y
index 4 :
index 5 : s
index 6 : t
index 7 : a
index 8 : r
index 9 : k

In the above example, first, we iterate the whole string using for loops. In the for loop, an “i” represents the string’s index. So we can get characters from string by using the “string[i]”. It looks similar to accessing an array.

Which method you should choose to get a character from a string

The best way to get a character from a string is to use JavaScript’s String.charAt() function. The for loop or any loop will take time to iterate every character of the array, which is not the optimal solution, in my opinion.

That’s it for this tutorial.

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