getting parts of strings

[Anon]

say i have
$string = "dfihsdfhsduhfsuidhfushdif";

how would i go about getting the first letter of the string as another variable..
like
$string2 = "first_letter_of_string"

understand?
thanks

also how do you turn a string to upper case and lower case
(im new) =)

[brandonschnell]

substr — Return part of a string

strtolower — Make a string lowercase
strtoupper — Make a string uppercase

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.strings.php

[cordex]

True, substr() would work for this but if all jonas needs is the first letter of a string placed in another variable:

$newvar = $string[0];