st: how to keep only the first letter of a string type variable

[sarah smith <sarah22209@gmail.com>]

Hi,
 
I have a variable of string type and I only want to keep the first
letter in each observation. I tried to use "abbrev" function as below:

gen str11  newcountry = abbrev( country,1)

but it didn't work. Could you help me please? and thanks a lot David
for your reply about missing data!

Sarah
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/