Using the Left Function in MySQL

The following SQL schema will produce the table below.

Create table If Not Exists Employees (employee_id int, name varchar(30), salary int);
Truncate table Employees;
insert into Employees (employee_id, name, salary) values ('2', 'Meir', '3000');
insert into Employees (employee_id, name, salary) values ('3', 'Michael', '3800');
insert into Employees (employee_id, name, salary) values ('7', 'Addilyn', '7400');
insert into Employees (employee_id, name, salary) values ('8', 'Juan', '6100');
insert into Employees (employee_id, name, salary) values ('9', 'Kannon', '7700');

employee_id	name	salary
2	Meir	3000
3	Michael	3800
7	Addilyn	7400
8	Juan	6100
9	Kannon	7700

Let's say we want to select the name column where the name begins with the letter "M".

We can do this by using the LEFT() function inside of a WHERE clause.

SELECT name
FROM Employees
WHERE LEFT(name, 1) = "M";

name
Meir
Michael

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Using the Left Function in MySQL