[ale] [OT] PHP Question

[lists at cybertechcafe.net (Nathan J. Underwood)]

Is there a way to say "Just give me the first n characters of a string" 
in PHP?  For example, if the string was "johndoe", and I just wanted the 
first 3 characters, or "joh"?  I think I could do it with some kind of 
regex, but I can't seem to come up with one that works.  It will be used 
in a MySQL query when it's done, like the following:

$string = "johndoe";
$newstring = justgivemetheleft3($string);

$query = "SELECT * from table where name like "$newstring%"

I can't say give me everything that matches johndoe, because some of 
them are john doe, some are john_doe, some are john, etc.  But, the 
first 3 will always be right.