How to get the last character of a string in a shell?

I have written the following lines to get the last character of a string:

str=$1
i=$((${#str}-1))
echo ${str:$i:1}

It works for abcd/:

$ bash last_ch.sh abcd/
/

It does not work for abcd*:

$ bash last_ch.sh abcd*
array.sh assign.sh date.sh dict.sh full_path.sh last_ch.sh

It lists the files in the current folder.