SUBSTRING() function in SQL Server

The SUBSTRING() function returns part of a character, text, binary, or image expression.

Summary

SUBSTRING ( Expression , Start_Index , Length )

Expression: This is a character string,text, binary string,  a column, or an expression that includes a column.

Start_Index: This is an integer value  that specifies where the substring begins.

Length:  This is a positive integer that specifies how many characters or bytes of the expression will be returned. If this value is negative, SQL Server returns an error.

Example:

Suppose we have a table ‘tbl_employee’

Table name: tbl_Employee

The following  example shows how to return a part of a string, in the following query we can get the some part of the EmpName from first character to third character.

SELECT Empname, SUBSTRING(Empname,1,3)  AS ‘Employee Code’
FROM tbl_employee

Output Will be: