Left

FreeBASIC

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Left

Returns the leftmost substring of a string

Syntax

Declare Function Left ( ByRef str As Const String, ByVal n As Integer ) As String Declare Function Left ( ByRef str As Const WString, ByVal n As Integer ) As WString

Usage

result = Left[$]( str, n )

Parameters

str

The source string.

n

The number of characters to return from the source string.

Return Value

Returns the leftmost substring from str.

Description

Returns the leftmost n characters starting from the left (beginning) of str. If str is empty, then the null string ("") is returned. If n <= 0 then the null string ("") is returned. If n > len(str) then the entire source string is returned.

Example

Dim text As String = "hello world" Print Left(text, 5)
will produce the output:

hello

An Unicode example:

dim text as wstring*20
text = "Привет, мир!"
print left(text, 6) 'displays "Привет"

Platform Differences

DOS does not support the wide-character string version of Left.

Dialect Differences

The string type suffix "$" is obligatory in the -lang qb dialect.
The string type suffix "$" is optional in the -lang fblite and -lang fb dialects.

Differences from QB

QB does not support Unicode.