Python: Get a string made of the first 2 and the last 2 chars from a given a string
Get string of first and last 2 chars.
Write a Python program to get a string made of the first 2 and last 2 characters of a given string. If the string length is less than 2, return the empty string instead.

Sample Solution:
Python Code:
# Define a function named string_both_ends that takes one argument, 'str'.
def string_both_ends(str):
# Check if the length of the input string 'str' is less than 2 characters.
if len(str) < 2:
# If the string is shorter than 2 characters, return an empty string.
return ''
# If the string has at least 2 characters, concatenate the first two characters
# and the last two characters of the input string and return the result.
return str[0:2] + str[-2:]
# Call the string_both_ends function with different input strings and print the results.
print(string_both_ends('w3resource')) # Output: 'w3ce'
print(string_both_ends('w3')) # Output: 'w3w3'
print(string_both_ends('w')) # Output: ''
Sample Output:
w3ce w3w3
Flowchart:

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:
- Write a Python program to return a string made of the first two and the last two characters of a given string using slicing.
- Write a Python program to implement the extraction of the first two and last two characters recursively.
- Write a Python program to use conditional expressions to return the concatenated substring if the string length is at least 2, else return an empty string.
- Write a Python program to check the length of a string and output a new string composed of its first and last two characters using a ternary operator.
Python Code Editor:
Previous: Write a Python program to count the number of characters (character frequency) in a string.
Next: Write a Python program to get a string from a given string where all occurrences of its first char have been changed to '$', except the first char itself.
What is the difficulty level of this exercise?
Test your Programming skills with w3resource's quiz.
- Weekly Trends and Language Statistics
- Weekly Trends and Language Statistics