How to get first character of a string in SQL?

Question

I have a SQL column with a length of 6. Now want to take only the first char of that column. Is there any string function in SQL to do this?

Answer 1

All the major SQL platforms have a substring function, called SUBSTRING() in SQL Server/Access and SUBSTR() in Oracle and MySQL They all have the same format of parameters: (string, startposition, [length]). If length is omitted, it returns the substring from startposition to the end of the string.