LEFT
Extracts the specified number of characters from the left end of a string
Syntax
LEFT(str, len)
Arguments
str: any string or binary objectlen: the number of characters to be extracted
Return Type
String
Examples
SELECT LEFT("1234567", 3);
****
+--------------------+
| LEFT("1234567", 3) |
+--------------------+
| 123 |
+--------------------+
Implicit Collation
When character_set_server is set to utf8, string literals with characters using 4-byte encoding are implicitly assigned binary collation and processed as a sequence of bytes rather than characters. This implicit conversion to binary collation causes string functions to return unexpected results. To avoid using implicit binary collation, either use explicit type casting or use database columns defined with the utf8mb4 character set.
For more information, refer to Implicit Collation in Special Cases.