4.7.3- Pruning the Beginning or End of a String

Pruning the Beginning or End of a String

The Left and Right Functions can be used to extract a given numberof characters from the beginning or end of a given string. They don't actually'remove' the characters as such; instead, they act like the 'Copy' function ofa word processor and copy the selected section into the new variable. Each ofthese functions takes two parameters:

Left(string, number_of_characters)

And

Right(string, number_of_characters)

The Left function's second parameter, number_of_charactersspecifies how many characters to extract from the beginning (left-hand side) ofthe string:

strLeftChars =Left("HowLongIsAPieceOfString?",3)

StrLeftChars would contain thestring "How". Again, you can alsosupply a variable name to the Left function,which will extract the appropriate substring from the string contained by thisvariable. For example:

strText = "HowLongIsAPieceOfString?"

strLeftChars = Left(strText,7)

This would assign the string "HowLong"to the variable strLeftChars.

The Right function works inthe same way, except that it extracts characters from the (right-hand) end ofthe string:

strRightChars =Right("HowLongIsAPieceOfString?",7)

Here, the variable strRightCharsis assigned the string "String?".Again, this function supports the option of extracting characters from a stringvariant; and once again, symbols, spaces, and punctuation count as validcharacters.