Get the First 3 Characters of a String in JavaScript

Get the First 3 Characters of a String #

To get the first three characters of a string, call the substring() method and pass it 0 and 3 as parameters. The substring method will return a new string containing the first three characters of the original string.

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const str = 'Walk the dog';

const first3 = str.substring(0, 3);
console.log(first3); // 👉️ Wal

The two parameters we passed to the String.substring method are:

1. the start index - the index of the first character to be included in the returned string
2. the end index - go up to, but not including this index

To get the first three characters, we specified a start index of 0 and an end index of 3. This extracts characters at positions: 0, 1 and 2.

An alternative approach is to use the String.slice method.

Use the string.slice() method to get the first three characters of a string, e.g. const first3 = str.slice(0, 3);. The slice method will return a new string containing the first three characters of the original string.

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const str = 'Walk the dog';

const first3 = str.slice(0, 3);
console.log(first3); // 👉️ Wal

We passed the same parameters to the slice method - the start and end indexes. However, the methods are not identical.

For our purposes, the slice and substring methods do the same. However, there are some differences between the two.

If you want to read more on that, check out this section in the MDN docs.

Which approach you pick is a matter of personal preference. I'd go with the String.slice method as I find it more intuitive for other use cases mentioned in the MDN docs.

Further Reading #

• Get the First 2 Characters of a String in JavaScript
• Get the Last 2 Characters of a String in JavaScript