working with strings

Hi
I am fairly new to java, I 've got some background in visual basic
there is two function that I used a lot in VB
Left(String, Integer) to remove a number of characters from the left of a string
Ex: Left("Hello", 2)will give "He"
Right(String, Integer) to remove a number of characters from the right of a string
Ex : Right("Hello", 2) will give "lo"
I came up with this two methods in Java to deal with this

Code:

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public String left(String s, int len) {       
      StringBuffer str= new StringBuffer("");       
for (int j = 0;j < len;j++) {       
      str.append(s.charAt(j));       
}       
return str.toString();
}
public String right(String s, int len) {
      StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer("");       
for (int j = s.length()-len;j < s.length();j++) {       
      str.append(s.charAt(j));       
}       
      return str.toString();
}

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Question :
Is There a proper method In java tha really deals with this issue or shall I stick to my methods thank you

When you want to find out what you can do with a class, look at the JavaDocs first. It will save you wasting time reinventing the wheel. If you look at the String class, you'll find plenty of useful methods, including two flavours of substring(...).