In this C++ tutorial, you shall learn how to get the first character in the given string using string::at() function, or array notation, with examples.

C++ Get first character in String

string::at() function returns the char at specified index/position from the string. So, if we need to access the first character in the string, we can pass 0 as argument to at() function.

We can also use string indexing mechanism with square brackets to get the first character in string.

Syntax

The syntax of the expression to get the first character in the string str using string::at() function is

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str.at(0)

The syntax of the expression to get the first character in the string str using square brackets notation is

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str[0]

Programs

1. Get first char in string “apple” using string::at()

In the following program, we take a string in str, get the first character in str using string::at(), and print the character to console output.

main.cpp

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#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    string str = "apple";
    char firstChar = str.at(0);
    cout << "First character : " << firstChar;
}

Output

First character : a

2. Get first char in string “apple” using string[index]

In this program, we get the first character in str using square brackets notation.

main.cpp

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#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    string str = "apple";
    char firstChar = str[0];
    cout << "First character : " << firstChar;
}

Output

First character : a

Conclusion

In this C++ Tutorial, we learned how to get the first character from string using string[index] notation or string::at() function, with examples.