How to print olny 2 letters from start and 2 letters from end of a string for example from Hello world i want only Held in outpu

Question

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
#include <string>
#include <list>
using namespace std;
int main() {
string a ;
string f;
string b;
getline(cin,a);
if(a.length()==2){
a.append(a);
cout<<a<<endl;
}
else if (a.length()<2){
cout<<"error"<<endl;
}
else if (a.length()>2){
f =a.front();
b =a.back();
cout<<f<<b<<endl;
}
return 0;
}
in this example it prints only (Hd) but i want it print (Held)

Answer 1

You can think of string like an array.
int main(){
int size;
string a;
getline(cin,a);
size = a.size();
size--;
cout << a[0] << a[1] << a[size] << a[size--] << endl;
return 0;
}

Answer 2

Thank you very much Julien Quentin it was very useful