To get the first X letters of a word:
It's very simple you can just pipe it to head with
-c 1 (gives the first letter and so on)
-c2 (2 gives the first 2 letters).
echo "dsjfsdlksjdklf;jlsd;kflasdj;kl"|head -c 2
Returns ds
To get the last X letters of a word:
Now we use tail with -c but it works differently. ........