Which expression captures the first eight characters of recipe_name?

• A. SUBSTR(recipe_name, 1, 8)
• B. RIGHT(recipe_name, 8)
• C. MID(recipe_name, 1, 8)
• D. LEN(recipe_name)

Answer: (A)

Extracting a substring usually involves starting at a specific position in the string and taking a defined number of characters. The expression that grabs the first eight characters starts at the very beginning (position 1) and takes eight characters, so it returns the initial portion of recipe_name. The correct form is SUBSTR(recipe_name, 1, 8) because it explicitly starts at position 1 and uses a length of 8. The other options don’t fit: RIGHT(recipe_name, 8) gets the last eight characters, not the first; MID(recipe_name, 1, 8) is a variant you might see in some systems but isn’t universal SQL syntax; LEN(recipe_name) returns the total length of the string, not a substring.