How to remove the first character from a string in JavaScript

You can use the substring() and slice() methods to remove one or more characters at the start of a string in JavaScript.

Remove the first character from a string

You can use the substring() method to remove the first character from a string. The str.substring(1) returns a new string without the first character of the original string.

const str = 'JavaScript'

const result = str.substring(1)
console.log(result) // avaScript

The substring() method extracts characters between the start and end indexes from a string and returns the substring.

Indexes in JavaScript are zero-based. The first character in a string has an index of 0, and the last has an index of str.length - 1.

We passed 1 as a starting index to the substring() method to exclude the first character J from the returned string. The index of 1 specifies that we want to skip the characters at indexes 0 and 1 and get a new string containing the rest.

Alternatively, you could use the slice() method to remove the first character from a string, as shown below:

const str = 'JavaScript'

const result = str.slice(1)
console.log(result) // avaScript

The slice() method extracts a part of a string between the start and end indexes, specified as first and second parameters. It returns the extracted part as a new string and does not change the original string.

Remove the first N characters from a string

You can also use the substring() method to remove the first N characters from a string in JavaScript:

const str = 'JavaScript'

const removed2 = str.slice(3)
console.log(removed2) // aScript

const removed6 = str.slice(6)
console.log(removed6) // ript

const removed9 = str.slice(9)
console.log(removed9) // t

As you can see above, we omitted the end index and only passed a starting index to substring() to remove the first N characters from a string.

The slice() method can also be used to remove the first N characters from a string:

const str = 'JavaScript'

const removed4 = str.slice(4)
console.log(removed4) // Script

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