---
title: "Substring"
slug: "substring"
updated: 2024-05-04T19:52:54Z
published: 2024-05-04T19:52:54Z
canonical: "help.mail-and-deploy.com/substring"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.mail-and-deploy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Substring

### General

The *Substring* function can be used to extract characters from a [String](/release34/docs/string).

### Syntax

The syntax of the *Substring* function is:

          Left Function Syntax

          

Left(<value>, <first_character_index>, <length>)

The character index is zero-based (the first character has an index of 0).

### Examples

The following [Expression](/release34/docs/introduction-to-mail-and-deploy-expressions) returns a [String](/release34/docs/string) that contains 3 characters starting from the second character of the value of variable *vTest* of a [Datasource](/release34/docs/introduction-to-datasources) named *Consumer Sales*:

          Substring Function Example

          

Substring([Datasource].[Consumer Sales].[Variable].[vTest], 1, 3)