Returns a string of length length, containing the leftmost length characters of the receiving string. The string returned is padded with pad characters (or truncated) on the right as needed. The default pad character is a blank. The length must be a positive whole number or zero. The left method is exactly equivalent to substr(1, length, pad).

"abc d"~left(8)        -->    "abc d   "
"abc d"~left(8,".")    -->    "abc d..."
"abc  def"~left(7)     -->    "abc  de"