How to get the Last Element in a JavaScript Array

When you write complex-enough software, you will often need to get the last element of an array.

In this post, we'll learn how to get the last element of an array in JavaScript.

For this post, we'll be using the following array as the example:

JAVASCRIPT
const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

This array has 5 elements. We can confirm that by using the .length property:

JAVASCRIPT
const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

console.log(array.length); // 5

We also know that in JavaScript, you can use brackets with the index of the element you want to get from an array.

For example, since arrays are zero-index, you can get the first element of the array by using the [0] index:

JAVASCRIPT
const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

console.log(array[0]); // 1

Therefore, if we want to get the last element of an array, we must pass it the index equal to the length of the array minus one. The minus one accounts for the fact that the first element has an index of 0 instead of 1.

This is how you get the last element of an array in JavaScript:

JAVASCRIPT
const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

const lastElement = array[array.length - 1];

console.log(lastElement); // 5

Conclusion

Getting the last element of an array is a common task in JavaScript.

In this post, we've seen the best way to get the last element of an array is to use the .length property and the [index] syntax to get the element.

Hopefully, this helped you with your JavaScript journey!

Thanks for reading!

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