Problem Statement

The task is to demonstrate how to remove the first and last characters from a string. The solution should demonstrate how to obtain the following results:

If the program uses UTF-8 or UTF-16, it must work on any valid Unicode code point, whether in the Basic Multilingual Plane or above it. The program must reference logical characters (code points), not 8-bit code units for UTF-8 or 16-bit code units for UTF-16. Programs for other encodings (such as 8-bit ASCII, or EUC-JP) are not required to handle all Unicode characters.

Let's start with the solution:

Function TopNTail(s,mode)
    Select Case mode
        Case "top"
            TopNTail = Mid(s,2,Len(s)-1)
        Case "tail"
            TopNTail = Mid(s,1,Len(s)-1)
        Case "both"
            TopNTail = Mid(s,2,Len(s)-2)
    End Select
End Function

WScript.Echo "Top: UPRAISERS = " & TopNTail("UPRAISERS","top")
WScript.Echo "Tail: UPRAISERS = " & TopNTail("UPRAISERS","tail")
WScript.Echo "Both: UPRAISERS = " & TopNTail("UPRAISERS","both")