• *grouping_word Function
• *grouping_word_inside Function
• a5_csweb_to_list Function
• a5_extractoddata Function
• a5_get_pos_linestart Function
• a5_modeless_textencoder Function
• expandtablefiletypes Function
• EXTRACT_STRING Function
• getstringfromfile Function
• LASTWORD Function
• LEADING Function
• LEFT Function
• left_u Function
• rat_u Function
• regex_literal_extract Function
• regex_literal_mask_get Function
• right_u Function
• SUBSTR Function
• substr_u Function
• TRAILING Function
• WORD2 Function
• WORD_IN_COMMON Function
• WORD_IN_COMMON_C Function
• WORD_UNIQUE Function
• WORD_UNIQUE_C Function

LEFT Function

Syntax

Arguments

text

A character string.

Number_of_characters

The number of characters to return. If Number_Of_Characters is positive, the function returns Number_Of_Characters of characters from the beginning of Input_String. If Number_Of_Characters is negative, the function returns LEN( Input_String ) - Number_Of_Characters from the beginning of Input_String. Numeric

Description

Returns a portion of a string, starting with the leftmost character.

Discussion

LEFT() returns a character string containing the left-most Number_Of_Characters of the Input_String. LEFT( Input_String, Number_Of_Characters) achieves the same result as SUBSTR(Input_String, 1, Number_Of_Characters).

Example

dim firstname as C
firstname = "Beverley"
? left(firstname, 2)
= "Be"
? left(firstname, -2)
= "Beverl"

See Also

• Character Extraction Functions
• Character Formatting Functions