LEFT (Transact-SQL)

Applies to: 👁 Image
SQL Server 👁 Image
Azure SQL Database 👁 Image
Azure SQL Managed Instance 👁 Image
Azure Synapse Analytics 👁 Image
Analytics Platform System (PDW) 👁 Image
SQL analytics endpoint in Microsoft Fabric 👁 Image
Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric 👁 Image
SQL database in Microsoft Fabric

Returns the left part of a character string with the specified number of characters.

👁 Image
Transact-SQL syntax conventions

Syntax

LEFT ( character_expression , integer_expression ) 

Arguments

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. If integer_expression is type bigint and contains a large value, character_expression must be of a large data type such as varchar(max).

The integer_expression parameter counts a UTF-16 surrogate character as one character.

Return Types

Returns varchar when character_expression is a non-Unicode character data type.

Returns nvarchar when character_expression is a Unicode character data type.

Remarks

When using SC collations, the integer_expression parameter counts a UTF-16 surrogate pair as one character. For more information, see Collation and Unicode Support.

Examples

A. Using LEFT with a column

The following example returns the five leftmost characters of each product name in the Product table of the AdventureWorks2025 database.

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's the result set.

-- 
ab 
 
(1 row(s) affected) 

Examples: Azure Synapse Analytics and Analytics Platform System (PDW)

C. Using LEFT with a column

The following example returns the five leftmost characters of each product name.

-- Uses AdventureWorks 
 
SELECT LEFT(EnglishProductName, 5) 
FROM dbo.DimProduct 
ORDER BY ProductKey; 

D. Using LEFT with a character string

The following example uses LEFT to return the two leftmost characters of the character string abcdefg.

-- Uses AdventureWorks 
 
SELECT LEFT('abcdefg',2) FROM dbo.DimProduct; 

Here's the result set.

-- 
ab 

See Also

LTRIM (Transact-SQL)
RIGHT (Transact-SQL)
RTRIM (Transact-SQL)
STRING_SPLIT (Transact-SQL)
SUBSTRING (Transact-SQL)
TRIM (Transact-SQL)
CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL)
Data Types (Transact-SQL)