my $str = "a string";
print substr($str, -1);

__output__

g
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_________
broquaint

There are many ways to get the last character from a string :

  use strict;
  my $string = "Hello World";
  my $char;

  # Use a capturing parenthesis
  $char = $1
    if ($string =~ /(.)\Z/);
  print ">>$string<<\n";
  print "[[$char]]";

  # Chop the last char away from $string
  # this modifies $string
  $char = chop $string;
  print ">>$string<<\n";
  print "[[$char]]";

  # use substr :
  $char = substr($string,-1);
  print ">>$string<<\n";
  print "[[$char]]";
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perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web
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my ($last) = $x =~ /(.)$/;
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my $last = substr $x, -1, 1;
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------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $string = "This is a string";

my $char = (unpack("a", reverse $string))[0];
print $char;
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No, not faster, or shorter, just Another Way :-P

Arjen

my ($char) = unpack sprintf("x%d A", length($string)-1), $string;
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Makeshifts last the longest.

Yet another way:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $str = "hello, world!";
my $result = substr($str,length($str)-1,1);
print $result;
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PS: Surprisingly, length($str)-- doesn't work for me, but length($str)-1 does.

Leonid Mamtchenkov aka TVSET

I always forget about 'chop'

Thanks again!

Note that chop() alters the string it's operating on.

--perlplexer

Just for the sake of completeness, I wanted to make sure you didn't also forget about 'chomp' - here's the 1st few lines of 'perldoc -f chomp':

       chomp VARIABLE
       chomp( LIST )
       chomp   This safer version of "chop" removes any trailing strin
+g that
               corresponds to the current value of $/ (also known as
               $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the "English" module).  It r
+eturns
               the total number of characters removed from all its arg
+uments.
               It’s often used to remove the newline from the end of a
+n input
               record when you’re worried that the final record may be
+ missing
               its newline.  When in paragraph mode ("$/ = """), it re
+moves
               all trailing newlines from the string.  When in slurp m
+ode ("$/
               = undef") or fixed-length record mode ($/ is a referenc
+e to an
               integer or the like, see perlvar) chomp() won’t remove 
+any-
               thing.  If VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps $_.  Example:

                   while (<>) {
                       chomp;  # avoid \n on last field
                       @array = split(/:/);
                       # ...
                   }
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HTH.