bug in substring???

I'm using substring.  Since I'm a coder more than a database guy, I 
expected this:

select substring('abcdefgh',0,4);

would give me 

abcd

but it gives me a left aligned 'abc'

select substring('abcdefgh',1,4);

works fine.

select substring('abcdefgh',-4,4);

gives me nothing.  Shouldn't a negative offset, or even 0 offset result in 
an error or something here?  Or is there a special meaning to a negative 
offset I'm not getting?

Just wondering.