Using sed, how do you print the first 'N' characters of a line?

Question

Using sed what is an one liner to print the first n characters? I am doing the following:

grep -G 'defn -test.*' OctaneFullTest.clj  | sed ....

Paul_Tomblin_3333 · Answer

Don't use sed, use cut:

grep .... | cut -c 1-N

If you MUST use sed:

grep ... | sed -e 's/^$.\{12\}$.*/\1/'

user_131527 · Answer

don't have to use grep either

an example:

sed -n '/searchwords/{s/^$.\{12\}$.*/\1/g;p}' file

user_62365 · Answer

Strictly with sed:

grep ... | sed -e 's/^$.\{N\}$.*$/\1/'

user_10409177 · Answer

How about head ?

echo alonglineoftext | head -c 9