TypeScript - get first character of string

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

Example 1

The below example shows the use of .substring() method which returns the part of a string between the 0 and 1 indexes.

Runnable example:

const text: string = '123';
const substring: string = text.substring(0, 1);

console.log('text: ' + text); // 123
console.log('substring: ' + substring); // 1

Output:

text: 123
substring: 1

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:

// true means string is empty

console.log(''.substring(0, 1) === ''); // empty
console.log('1'.substring(0, 1)); // 1
console.log('12'.substring(0, 1)); // 1
console.log('123'.substring(0, 1)); // 1

Output:

true
1
1
1

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