How can we get some starting number of characters from the data stored in a MySQL table’s column?

To get some starting number of characters from the data stored in the MySQL table’s column, we can use MySQL LEFT() function. It will return the number of characters specified as its argument. We need to provide the name of the column, having the particular record from which we want to get starting characters, as its first argument. To demonstrate it we are taking the example of a table named ‘examination_btech’ having the following examination details of students −

mysql> Select * from examination_btech;
+-----------+----------+--------+
| RollNo    | Name     | Course |
+-----------+----------+--------+
| 201712001 | Rahul    | B.tech |
| 201712002 | Raman    | B.tech |
| 201712003 | Sahil    | B.tech |
| 201712004 | Shalini  | B.tech |
| 201712005 | Pankaj   | B.tech |
| 201712006 | Mohan    | B.tech |
| 201712007 | Yash     | B.tech |
| 201712008 | digvijay | B.tech |
| 201712009 | Gurdas   | B.tech |
| 201712010 | Preeti   | B.tech |
+-----------+----------+--------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now if we want to get the first six characters from the series of roll no then it can be done with the help of LEFT() function as follows −

mysql> Select LEFT(RollNo, 6) FROM examination_btech;
+-----------------+
| LEFT(RollNo, 6) |
+-----------------+
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
| 201712          |
+-----------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)