How to get first character of a string in SQL?

Question

I have a SQL column with a length of 6. Now want to take only the first char of that column. Is there any string function in SQL to do this?

Answer 1

It's most preferable to use LEFT, as it's more readable and cleaner to use. Otherwise, there's no difference between them.  

LEFT(colName, 1) is equal to SUBSTRING(colName, 1, 1).