Using Python to Remove First Character from String

To remove the first character from a string in Python, the easiest way is with slicing.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_first_char = string[1:]

print(string_without_first_char)

#Output:
his is a string variable

When using string variables in Python, we can easily perform string manipulation to change the value of the string variables.

One such manipulation is to remove characters from a string variable.

For example, we can easily remove the first character from a string in Python. To remove the first character from a string in Python, we can use string slicing.

To remove the first character in a string using slicing, we know that the first character has index ‘0’. So, to get everything except the first character, we start our slice at position ‘1’ and don’t provide an end position to get everything else in the string.

Below is an example of how to get rid of the first character in a string using Python.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_first_char = string[1:]

print(string_without_first_char)

#Output:
his is a string variable

You can also use slicing to remove the last character from a string in Python in a very similar way. To remove the last character in a string, pass ‘-1’ as the end position.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_last_char = string[:-1]

print(string_without_last_char)

#Output:
This is a string variabl

How to Remove the First N Characters from String Using Python

We can also use slicing to get rid of the first n characters of a string easily in Python.

To remove the first n characters from a string using Python, you just need to change the input to the start position argument of the slice you want.

For example, to remove the first 5 characters from a string, you pass ‘5’ as shown in the following Python code.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_first_5_char = string[5:]

print(string_without_first_5_char)

#Output:
is a string variable

How to Remove the First and Last Character from a String Using Python

Another example of how we can use slicing to remove characters from a string using Python is the removal of the first and last character from a string.

With slicing again, we can easily get rid of the first and last character from a string.

To do so, we need to select all of the elements between the first and last character.

Below is how we can use Python to remove the first and last character from a string.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_first_last_char = string[1:-1]

print(string_without_first_last_char)

#Output:
his is a string variabl

How to Remove a Character at a Specific Position in a String Using Python

The last example I want to share with you in this article is how to remove a character from a string at a specific position.

Let’s say we want to remove the sixth character from a string.

To do so, we can create two slices from our original string and then concatenate them. We first slice from the start of our string to the desired position, and then slice from the desired position + 1 to the end.

Below is an example of how to use slicing in Python to remove a character at a specific position.

string = "This is a string variable"

string_without_sixth_char = string[0:6]+string[7:]

print(string_without_sixth_char)

#Output:
This i a string variable

Hopefully this article has been beneficial for you to learn how to remove the first character from a string in your Python code.