How to access number of iterations while looping over a string — Python

I am trying to remove the first and last characters in a given string in python.

I want the if statement to replace the letter with an empty string, as the last line is attempting. But i is a str and not an int, so I cant use it to find the index in the replace function. I need some way to access the number of iterations to the string, and not the string letter itself, is there a simple thing I'm missing here?

def without_end(str):
  first = str[0]
  last = str[-1]
  for i in str:
    if i == first or i == last:
      new_string = str.replace(str[i], "")
  return new_string

In Python you can do the following.

x = "foof"
x = x[1:-1]

This will result in the string oo.

In this implementation, input_str[1:-1] slices the string to exclude the first and last characters, effectively removing them from the original string.

Avoid using the name str as a variable, as it is a built-in Python type, and using it as a variable name may cause confusion and unexpected behavior. I renamed the parameter to input_str to avoid any conflicts.

Code:

def without_end(input_str):
    return input_str[1:-1]

# Test the function
result = without_end("Hello")
print(result)  # Output: "ell"

According to feedback, the below code is the correct one.
I leave the above code to stay there for a different perspective.

Code:

def without_end(input_str):
    first = input_str[0]
    last = input_str[-1]
    new_string = "".join([char for char in input_str if char != first and char != last])
    return new_string

# Tests
print(without_end("hello"))   # Output: "ell"
print(without_end("python"))  # Output: "ytho"
print(without_end("code"))    # Output: "od"
print(without_end("hellocode")) # Output: "llocod"