How to get first n characters of a string in Ruby

In this article, we will see how to get the first n characters of a string in Ruby.

Consider the following string

1fruit = "watermelon"

Now you want to extract the first 5 characters from it.

You can extract the first n characters using the syntax string[0,n]. In our example:

1fruit = "watermelon"
2firstFiveChars = fruit[0,5]
3puts firstFiveChars # 👉water

The first argument is from which index to start and the second argument defines the number of characters to retrieve.

You can also use the following syntax:

1fruit = "watermelon"
2firstFiveChars = fruit[0...5] # Including 5th index
3# OR
4firstFiveChars = fruit[0..6] # Excluding 6th index

In the above code, the second argument specifies the index in the string, not the number of characters.

You can read more about it here.

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