Display first and last half of any string entered into textbox - vb.net

Question

I want to display the first and last characters of any given string entered into a textbox. The strings can be of any length as the user wants (as long as it is one word) I would like to be able to do something like this... "william = will and iam" or "Celtic = Cel and tic"
I understand I would have to split or divide the string. How would I go about doing this? Any help is appreciated, thanks.
EDIT:
Thanks for your help once again guys, this is how the code ended up!
Dim strInput = txtString.Text
Dim halflength = strInput.Length / 2
Dim firsthalf = strInput.Substring(0, halflength)
Dim secondhalf = strInput.Substring(halflength)
Dim strResults = firsthalf
Dim secondResult = secondhalf
MessageBox.Show(firsthalf)
MessageBox.Show(secondhalf)
MessageBox.Show("First half of string contains... " & " " & strResults.Length.ToString & " characters", "Character Count")
MessageBox.Show("Second half of string contains... " & " " & secondResult.Length.ToString & " characters", "Character Count")
EDIT:
Also meant to mention my current incorrect code.
Dim strInput As String
Dim strLength As String
Dim strResults As String
strInput = txtString.Text
strLength = strInput.Length / 2
strResults = txtString.Text
MessageBox.Show(strInput.Length.ToString, "Length of characters")
MessageBox.Show(strLength.ToString)
MessageBox.Show(strResults.Substring(0, 3))

Answer 1

String.Substring and String.Length should give you everything you need to get started on this.
Seeing your existing code will make this easier. Let's walk through what we have now.
Let's assume we have just a plain, simple string like this instead of a textbox for the sake of making things easier:
Dim txtString = "Hello World"
Now, in order to split the length of the string in half; we need to get the length. The `Length property will give is that, and then divide it by two.
Dim halfLength = txtString.Length \ 2
This will perform integer division; so any remaining decimal is truncated.
Now we know where the middle of the string is. We can now use String.Substring to carve out a peice of the string by index. Substring takes two parameters, the index where to start the string, and number of characters to take. There is a second overload that takes the index to start at and consumes till the end of the string. Indexes are zero based. So for example, if we wanted to start at the beginning of the string, we'd use zero. If we wanted to skip the first character, we'd use one.
For the first half of the string, we don't want to skip any characters, so we'll use zero. The number of characters we want is half length of the string, so we pass in halfLength:
Dim firstHalf = txtString.Substring(0, halfLength)
For the second half, we want to start in the middle of the string, and consume characters till the end, so we'll use the other overload:
Dim secondHalf = txtString.Substring(halfLength)
You now have your string split in half.
The final result looks like this:
Dim txtString = "Hello World"
Dim halfLength = txtString.Length \ 2
Dim firstHalf = txtString.Substring(0, halfLength)
Dim secondHalf = txtString.Substring(halfLength)

Answer 2

Assuming the rules are "each side is half the length with the left side taking precedence", you would use Substring and some simple division:
Dim str As String = "william"
Dim part1 As String = str.Substring(0, CInt(Math.Ceiling(str.Length / 2.0#)))
Dim part2 As String = str.Substring(part1.Length)
part1 & " and " & part2 'will and iam
Here's a demo.

Answer 3

My code displays first half and last half of any number of characters entered.
Declare Variable
Dim strResults As String
Fetch text from textbox
strResults = Textbox1.Text
Display the first half of the text
MessageBox.Show(strResults.Substring(0, strResults.Length / 2), "First Half Characters")
Display the last half of the text
MessageBox.Show(strResults.Substring(strResults.Length / 2), "Last Half Characters")
Full code:
Dim strResults As String
strResults = Textbox1.Text
MessageBox.Show(strResults.Substring(0, strResults.Length / 2), "First Half Characters")
MessageBox.Show(strResults.Substring(strResults.Length / 2), "Last Half Characters")