LEFT (Transact-SQL)
Returns the left part of a character string with the specified number of characters.
Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions
- character_expression
-
Is an expression of character or binary data. character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column. character_expression can be of any data type, except text or ntext, that can be implicitly converted to varchar or nvarchar. Otherwise, use the CAST function to explicitly convert character_expression.
- integer_expression
-
Is a positive integer that specifies how many characters of the character_expression will be returned. If integer_expression is negative, an error is returned. integer_expression can be of type bigint.
Compatibility levels can affect return values. For more information about compatibility levels, see sp_dbcmptlevel (Transact-SQL).
A. Using LEFT with a column
The following example returns the five leftmost characters of each product name.
USE AdventureWorks; GO SELECT LEFT(Name, 5) FROM Production.Product ORDER BY ProductID; GO
B. Using LEFT with a character string
The following example uses LEFT to return the two leftmost characters of the character string abcdefg.
SELECT LEFT('abcdefg',2)
GO
Here is the result set.
-- ab (1 row(s) affected)
Reference
Data Types (Transact-SQL)String Functions (Transact-SQL)
