How to get the first five character of a String

Question

I have read this question to get first char of the string. Is there a way to get the first n number of characters from a string in C#?

Answer 1

No one mentioned how to make proper checks when using Substring(), so I wanted to contribute about that.

If you don't want to use Linq and go with Substring(), you have to make sure that your string is bigger than the second parameter (length) of Substring() function.

Let's say you need the first 5 characters. You should get them with proper check, like this:

string title = "love" // 15 characters
var firstFiveChars = title.Length <= 5 ? title : title.Substring(0, 5);

// firstFiveChars: "love" (4 characters)

Without this check, Substring() function would throw an exception because it'd iterate through letters that aren't there.

I think you get the idea...