[javascript] How to get first character of string?

I have a string, and I need to get its first character.

var x = 'somestring';
alert(x[0]); //in ie7 returns undefined

How can I fix my code?

var string  = "Hello World";
console.log(charAt(0));

The charAt(0) is JavaScript method, It will return value based on index, here 0 is the index for first letter.

x.substring(0,1)

Details

substring(start, end) extracts the characters from a string, between the 2 indices "start" and "end", not including "end" itself.

Special notes

• If "start" is greater than "end", this method will swap the two arguments, meaning str.substring(1, 4) == str.substring(4, 1).
• If either "start" or "end" is less than 0, it is treated as if it were 0.

Example of all method

First : string.charAt(index)

Return the caract at the index index

var str = "Stack overflow";_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(str.charAt(0));

Second : string.substring(start,length);

Return the substring in the string who start at the index start and stop after the length length

Here you only want the first caract so : start = 0 and length = 1

var str = "Stack overflow";_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(str.substring(0,1));

Alternative : string[index]

A string is an array of caract. So you can get the first caract like the first cell of an array.

Return the caract at the index index of the string

var str = "Stack overflow";_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(str[0]);

You can use as well:

var x = "somestring";

console.log(x.split("")[0]); // output "s"

This should work with older browsers.

Looks like I am late to the party, but try the below solution which I personally found the best solution:

var x = "testing sub string"
alert(x[0]);
alert(x[1]);

Output should show alert with below values: "t" "e"

charAt do not work if it has a parent prop
ex parent.child.chartAt(0)
use parent.child.slice(0, 1)

Try this as well:

x.substr(0, 1);

you can use in this way:

'Hello Mr Been'.split(' ').map( item => item.toUpperCase().substring(0, 1)).join(' ');

You can even use slice to cut-off all other characters:

x.slice(0, 1);

in JQuery you can use: in class for Select Option:

$('.className').each(function(){
    className.push($("option:selected",this).val().substr(1));
});

in class for text Value:

$('.className').each(function(){
    className.push($(this).val().substr(1));
});

in ID for text Value:

$("#id").val().substr(1)

You can use any of these.

There is a little difference between all of these So be careful while using it in conditional statement.

var string = "hello world";
console.log(string.slice(0,1));     //o/p:- h
console.log(string.charAt(0));      //o/p:- h
console.log(string.substring(0,1)); //o/p:- h
console.log(string.substr(0,1));    //o/p:- h
console.log(string[0]);             //o/p:- h


var string = "";
console.log(string.slice(0,1));     //o/p:- (an empty string)
console.log(string.charAt(0));      //o/p:- (an empty string)
console.log(string.substring(0,1)); //o/p:- (an empty string)
console.log(string.substr(0,1));    //o/p:- (an empty string)
console.log(string[0]);             //o/p:- undefined

var str="stack overflow";

firstChar  = str.charAt(0);

secondChar = str.charAt(1);

Tested in IE6+, FF, Chrome, safari.

In JavaScript you can do this:

const x = 'some string';_x000D_
console.log(x.substring(0, 1));

var x = "somestring"
alert(x.charAt(0));

The charAt() method allows you to specify the position of the character you want.

What you were trying to do is get the character at the position of an array "x", which is not defined as X is not an array.

in Nodejs you can use Buffer :

let str = "hello world"
let buffer = Buffer.alloc(2, str) // replace 2 by 1 for the first char
console.log(buffer.toString('utf-8')) // display he
console.log(buffer.toString('utf-8').length) // display 2

It's been 10 years yet no answer mentioned RegExp.

var x = 'somestring';
console.log(x.match(/./)[0]);