Get first character of string

PHP

Using the PHP: substr function not binary safe

$string = 'apple';
if (function_exists('mb_substr')) {
            echo mb_substr($string, 0, 1, 'UTF-8');
}
echo substr($string, 0, 1);
// return 'a'

Javascript

Using charAt() Method

var str = 'apple';
var first_character = str.charAt(0);
console.log("first_character: " + first_character);