LEFT and RIGHT functions

These functions return the specified number of leftmost or rightmost characters from a character string.

The number is based on the number of characters, not bytes, so that multibyte characters are counted as single characters.

Syntax

LEFT( string,  integer )

RIGHT( string,  integer )

Arguments

string

A CHAR string, a VARCHAR string, or any expression that evaluates to a CHAR or VARCHAR string.

integer

A positive integer.

Return type

VARCHAR

Examples

The following example uses data from the EVENT table in the TICKIT sample database. For more information, see Sample database.

To return the leftmost 5 and rightmost 5 characters from event names that have event IDs between 1000 and 1005, use the following example.

SELECT eventid, eventname,
LEFT(eventname,5) AS left_5,
RIGHT(eventname,5) AS right_5
FROM event
WHERE eventid BETWEEN 1000 AND 1005
ORDER BY 1;

+---------+----------------+--------+---------+
| eventid |   eventname    | left_5 | right_5 |
+---------+----------------+--------+---------+
|    1000 | Gypsy          | Gypsy  | Gypsy   |
|    1001 | Chicago        | Chica  | icago   |
|    1002 | The King and I | The K  | and I   |
|    1003 | Pal Joey       | Pal J  | Joey    |
|    1004 | Grease         | Greas  | rease   |
|    1005 | Chicago        | Chica  | icago   |
+---------+----------------+--------+---------+