How can you retrieve a portion of any column value by using a select query in MySQL?

SUBSTR() function is used to retrieve the portion of any column. 

Example: To get first five character of Contact Number use below command:

SELECT SUBSTR(ContactNo,1,5) FROM Shopping.Customer;

+-----------------------+
| SUBSTR(ContactNo,1,5) |
+-----------------------+
| 99990                 |
| 96504                 |
| 11111                 |
| 12345                 |
+-----------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)