extracting middle chars from a string

[stefangs]

i'm trying to extract the 3rd and 4th last characters from an 8-character string. for example, if the string is 12345678, i want to return 56.

i've worked around it by having an intermediate calc field Right (inputfield, 4) and then using a Left (intermediate, 2). but that's an extra field and feels clunky. seems to me it should be possible to directly access the required characters.

the input field always has 8 characters if that helps, and it's formatted as text, even though it contains numbers.

TIA.

FileMaker Version: 6

[-Queue-]

Middle(string, 5, 2)

[stefangs]

ah...yes - thanks for washing my head!