How to get first character of string?

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"

you can use in this way:

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

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

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

You can use any of the following :

let userEmail = "email";
console.log(userEmail[0]); // e
console.log(userEmail.charAt(0)); // e
console.log(userEmail.slice(0, 1)); // e
console.log(userEmail.substring(0, 1)); // e
console.log(userEmail.substr(0, 1)); // e
console.log(userEmail.split("", 1).toString()); // e
console.log(userEmail.match(/./)[0]); // e

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

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

Since every string is an array, probably the most succinct solution is by using the new spread operator:

const x = 'somestring'
const [head, ...tail] = x
console.log(head) // 's'

bonus is you can now access the total string but the first character using join('') on tail:

console.log(tail.join('')) // 'omestring'

For any string str = "Hello World"

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

Output: H W

There are many ways to find the string first character in Javascript. I think the easiest way to find is the string.charAt() method. This method takes an index number as a parameter and returns the index value. If you didn't give any parameter by default its returns the first character of the string.

 const str = "Bangladesh";
 const firstCharacter = str.charAt(0);
 const secondCharacter = str.charAt(1);
 console.log(firstCharacter)
 console.log(secondCharacter)

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 as well:

var x = "somestring";

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

This should work with older browsers.