This is a simple question and I have looked around for the answer but have not been able to find it. How do I return the first character of a string in MySQL. For example the following code returns the firstname of students in a database:

SELECT (first_name) FROM chc_students;

How do I modify that query to return only the first letter of the firstname?

I'd use the Left() function.

-PatP

Use:
select left("string",1);

returns:
s

Thanks, that worked