JavaScript - get first n characters of string

In this short article, we would like to show you how to get the first n characters of a string in JavaScript.

Example 1

The below example shows the use of .substring() method which returns the part of a string between the 0 and n indexes.

Runnable example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

var text = '12345';

var n = 3;
var substring = text.substring(0,n);

console.log("text: " + text);           // 12345
console.log("substring: " + substring); // 123

Example 2

In the second example, we can see the result when we want to get a substring from a string in various cases (like a string shorter than the number of characters we want to get or an empty string).

Runnable example:

// ONLINE-RUNNER:browser;

// true means string is empty

console.log( "".substring(0, 3) === "" ); // empty
console.log( "1".substring(0, 3) ); // 1
console.log( "12".substring(0, 3) ); // 12
console.log( "123".substring(0, 3) ); // 123
console.log( "1234".substring(0, 3) ); // 123
console.log( "12345".substring(0, 3) ); // 123

Note:
Don't use substr() because it's a non-standard method.