Left() and right() functions in Flash?

I’ve searched Google and several Flash forums but I haven’t found this topic. I’m probably not searching for the right terms, although I’ve tried several. Here’s my problem:

In most web-based programming languages you can use the left() and right() functions to move through a string and pull out individual characters. In ColdFusion, I could do this:

left(“hello”, 1) and it would produce “h”

I could also do:

right(“hello”, 1) and it would produce “o”

Is there a conversion for this method in Flash? I want to pick the first letter of a string and capitalize it.

In ColdFusion I would do it like this:

uCase(left(“hello”, 1)) – and it would give me: “H”

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.