Get first n characters of a string

Question

How can I get the first n characters of a string in PHP  What s the fastest way to trim a string to a specific number of characters  and append       if needed

User · Answer

this solution will not cut words  it will add three dots after the first space  I edited  Raccoon29 solution and I replaced all functions with mb  functions so that this will work for all languages such as arabic  function cut string  str   n chars   crop str                 buff   strip tags  str       if  mb strlen  buff   gt   n chars             cut index   mb strpos  buff        n chars            buff   mb substr  buff  0    cut index     false    n chars    cut index   1    UTF-8      crop str            return  buff

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sometimes  you need to limit the string to the last complete word ie  you don t want the last word to be broken instead you stop with the second last word   eg   we need to limit  This is my String  to 6 chars but instead of  This i     we want it to be  This      ie we will skip that broken letters in the last word    phew  am bad at explaining  here is the code    class Fun        public function limit text  text   len            if  strlen  text   lt   len                return  text                     text words   explode       text            out   null            foreach   text words as  word                if   strlen  word   gt   len   amp  amp   out    null                     return substr  word  0   len                                     if   strlen  out    strlen  word    gt   len                    return  out                                     out         word                    return  out

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The Multibyte extension can come in handy if you need control over the string charset    charset    UTF-8    length   10   string    Hai to yoo  I like yoo soo    if mb strlen  string   charset   gt   length       string   mb substr  string  0   length - 3   charset

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If you want to cut being careful to don t split words you can do the following  function ellipse  str  n chars  crop str                  buff strip tags  str       if strlen  buff   gt   n chars                 cut index strpos  buff      n chars            buff substr  buff 0   cut index   false   n chars   cut index 1    crop str            return  buff      if  str is shorter than  n chars returns it untouched   If  str is equal to  n chars returns it as is as well   if  str is longer than  n chars then it looks for the next space to cut or  if no more spaces till the end   str gets cut rudely instead at  n chars   NOTE  be aware that this method will remove all tags in case of HTML

User · Answer

This is what i do      function cutat  num   tt           if  mb strlen  tt  gt  num                tt mb substr  tt 0  num-2                           return  tt          where  num stands for number of chars  and  tt the string for manipulation

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if strlen  text   gt  10        text   substr  text 0 10

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If there is no hard requirement on the length of the truncated string  one can use this to truncate and prevent cutting the last word as well    text    Knowledge is a natural right of every human being of which no one has the right to deprive him or her under any pretext  except in a case where a person does something which deprives him or her of that right  It is mere stupidity to leave its benefits to certain individuals and teams who monopolize these while the masses provide the facilities and pay the expenses for the establishment of public sports        we don t want new lines in our preview  text only spaces   preg replace    s           text       truncates the text  text truncated   mb substr  text only spaces  0  mb strpos  text only spaces       50        prevents last word truncation  preview   trim mb substr  text truncated  0  mb strrpos  text truncated            In this case   preview will be  Knowledge is a natural right of every human being    Live code example  http   sandbox onlinephpfunctions com code 25484a8b687d1f5ad93f62082b6379662a6b4713

User · Answer

The function I used   function cutAfter  string   len   30   append                    return  strlen  string   gt   len               substr  string  0   len - strlen  append      append               string      See it in action

User · Answer

width   10    a   preg replace          width              1       a     or with wordwrap    a   preg replace        1   width   b            1       a

User · Answer

substr   would be best  you ll also want to check the length of the string first   str    someLongString    max   7   if strlen  str   gt   max        str   substr  str  0   max               wordwrap won t trim the string down  just split it up

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I m not sure if this is the fastest solution  but it looks like it is the shortest one    result   current explode   n   wordwrap  str   width       n        P S  See some examples here https   stackoverflow com a 17852480 131337

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I developed a function for this use   function str short  string  limit                         len strlen  string               if  len gt  limit                              to sub  len- limit                crop temp substr  string 0 - to sub                return  crop len  crop temp                                  else                               return  string                            you just call the function with string and limite eg str short  hahahahahah  5   it will cut of your string and add       at the end

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It s best to abstract you re code like so  notice the limit is optional and defaults to 10    print limit  string     function limit  var   limit 10        if   strlen  var   gt   limit                 return substr  string  0   limit                     else               return  var

User · Answer

This functionality has been built into PHP since version 4 0 6  See the docs   echo mb strimwidth  Hello World   0  10              outputs Hello W      Note that the trimmarker  the ellipsis above  are included in the truncated length

User · Answer

The simple version for 10 Characters from the beginning of the string  string   substr  string 0 10           Update   Based on suggestion for checking length  and also ensuring similar lengths on trimmed and untrimmed strings     string    strlen  string   gt  13    substr  string 0 10           string    So you will get a string of max 13 characters  either 13  or less  normal characters or 10 characters followed by        Update 2   Or as function   function truncate  string   length   dots                return  strlen  string   gt   length    substr  string  0   length - strlen  dots      dots    string      Update 3   It s been a while since I wrote this answer and I don t actually use this code any more  I prefer this function which prevents breaking the string in the middle of a word using the wordwrap function   function truncate  string  length 100  append   amp hellip         string   trim  string      if strlen  string   gt   length         string   wordwrap  string   length        string   explode   n    string  2        string    string 0     append         return  string

User · Answer

To create within a function  for repeat usage  and dynamical limited length  use   function string length cutoff  string   limit   subtext                return  strlen  string   gt   limit    substr  string  0    limit-strlen subtext     subtext    string        example usage  echo string length cutoff  Michelle Lee Hammontree-Garcia   26       or  for custom substitution text echo string length cutoff  Michelle Lee Hammontree-Garcia   26

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The codeigniter framework contains a helper for this  called the  text helper   Here s some documentation from codeigniter s user guide that applies  http   codeigniter com user guide helpers text helper html  just read the word limiter and character limiter sections   Here s two functions from it relevant to your question   if     function exists  word limiter          function word limiter  str   limit   100   end char     amp  8230                  if  trim  str                               return  str                     preg match     s      S   s    1    int   limit        str   matches            if  strlen  str     strlen  matches 0                           end char                          return rtrim  matches 0    end char            And  if     function exists  character limiter          function character limiter  str   n   500   end char     amp  8230                  if  strlen  str   lt   n                        return  str                      str   preg replace    s          str replace array   r n     r     n          str             if  strlen  str   lt    n                        return  str                      out               foreach  explode      trim  str   as  val                         out     val                   if  strlen  out   gt    n                                 out   trim  out                   return  strlen  out     strlen  str      out    out  end char

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Use substring  http   php net manual en function substr php   foo   substr  abcde  0  3

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yourString    bla blaaa bla blllla bla bla    out       if strlen  yourString   gt  22        while strlen  yourString   gt  22             pos   strrpos  yourString                if  pos     false  amp  amp   pos  lt   22                 out   substr  yourString 0  pos               break            else                yourString   substr  yourString 0  pos               continue                    else        out    yourString    echo  Output String     out

[php] Get first n characters of a string

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