| Type | Function | 
| Description | Extracts the leftmost characters of a string applied to IN. L specifies the number of characters to be extracted from IN. | 
| Note | When the string output is longer than 80 characters and the FU is directly connected to another FU, temporary string variables of size 80 are used. Calculation/usage will fail. If the result of the operation is longer than 80 characters, then a 'String too short' message will be logged and the output is set to an empty string or the last valid value is kept, respectively. Use an intermediate local variable in-between. | 
| Parameters | Inputs  IN 
 
| Data type: | STRING |  
| Description: | Input string. |   L 
Output
 
| Data type: | ANY_INT |  
| Description: | Number of characters to be extracted. |   OUT 
 
| Data type: | STRING |  
| Description: | Output string. |  | 
| Error behavior |  Error behavior 
The following table shows the errors which may occur while executing the function and the value returned by the function in the corresponding error case. 
 
| Error case | Output value |  
| L < 0 | Empty string '' |  
| L > len(IN)(len(...) = actual string length) | Empty string '' |  
| Resulted string too short | Empty string '' |  If any of the listed errors occurs, a string error is written to the Online log in the MESSAGES window. 
 
| Note Controller stop on string error: The controller can be automatically stopped when a string error occurs. This allows you to locate the error in your project. To enable the automatic stop of the controller in case of a string error, activate the
  button in the Cockpit toolbar of the controller. |  | 
| Additional information |  EN/ENO behavior 
The POU is only executed if TRUE  is applied to the EN input. If EN = FALSE, the POU is not executed and ENO = FALSE indicates the inactivity. If any of the errors listed under "Error behavior" occurs while executing the function, ENO is set to FALSE. 
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