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

Created by @bmtran (Bryant Tran)

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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

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Last Solution submitted on Oct 25, 2025

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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

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

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

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Last 200 Solutions

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Solution Comments

Problem Recent Solvers11197

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More from this Author56

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