LEFT()

Description

This function LEFT() returns the leftmost len characters from the string str, or NULL if any argument is NULL.

This function is multibyte safe.

Syntax

1. > LEFT(str,len)

Arguments

Arguments Description
str Required. The string to extract from.
len Required. The number of characters to extract. If this parameter is larger than the number of characters in string, this function will return string

Examples

1. mysql> select left('abcde', 3) from dual;
2. +----------------+
3. | left(abcde, 3) |
4. +----------------+
5. | abc            |
6. +----------------+
7. 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

9. drop table if exists t1;
10. CREATE TABLE t1 (str VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, len INT);
11. insert into t1 values('abcdefghijklmn',3);
12. insert into t1 values('  ABCDEFGH123456', 3);
13. insert into t1 values('ABCDEF  GHIJKLMN', 20);
14. insert into t1 values('ABCDEFGHijklmn   ', -1);
15. insert into t1 values('ABCDEFGH123456', -35627164);
16. insert into t1 values('', 3);
17. mysql> select left(str, len) from t1;
18. +------------------+
19. | left(str, len)   |
20. +------------------+
21. | abc              |
22. |   A              |
23. | ABCDEF  GHIJKLMN |
24. |                  |
25. |                  |
26. |                  |
27. +------------------+
28. 6 rows in set (0.01 sec)

30. mysql> select left('sdfsdfsdfsdf', len) from t1;
31. +-------------------------+
32. | left(sdfsdfsdfsdf, len) |
33. +-------------------------+
34. | sdf                     |
35. | sdf                     |
36. | sdfsdfsdfsdf            |
37. |                         |
38. |                         |
39. | sdf                     |
40. +-------------------------+
41. 6 rows in set (0.01 sec)