How to Truncate a string in PHP to the word closest to a certain number of characters

Question

I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text from a database and sends it out to a widget on a webpage   The original block of text can be a lengthy article or a short sentence or two  but for this widget I can t display more than  say  200 characters   I could use substr   to chop off the text at 200 chars  but the result would be cutting off in the middle of words-- what I really want is to chop the text at the end of the last word before 200 chars

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Ok so I got another version of this based on the above answers but taking more things in account utf-8   n and  amp nbsp      also a line stripping the wordpress shortcodes commented if used with wp   function neatest trim  content   chars     if  strlen  content   gt   chars            content   str replace   amp nbsp          content        content   str replace   n        content          use with wordpress            content   strip tags strip shortcodes trim  content          content   strip tags trim  content         content   preg replace    s    S            mb substr  content  0   chars          content   trim  content               return  content

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I used this before   lt  php      your desired width   200       string    var- gt content      if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width             string   wordwrap  string   your desired width            string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n        More                echo  string    gt

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By using the wordwrap function  It splits the texts in multiple lines such that the maximum width is the one you specified  breaking at word boundaries  After splitting  you simply take the first line   substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string   your desired width     n       One thing this oneliner doesn t handle is the case when the text itself is shorter than the desired width  To handle this edge-case  one should do something like   if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width          string   wordwrap  string   your desired width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n           The above solution has the problem of prematurely cutting the text if it contains a newline before the actual cutpoint  Here a version which solves this problem   function tokenTruncate  string   your desired width       parts   preg split      s n r        string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE      parts count   count  parts       length   0     last part   0    for     last part  lt   parts count     last part         length    strlen  parts  last part        if   length  gt   your desired width    break           return implode array slice  parts  0   last part        Also  here is the PHPUnit testclass used to test the implementation   class TokenTruncateTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase     public function testBasic          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 5 7 9 11 14   10           public function testEmptyString          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate     10           public function testShortString          this- gt assertEquals  1 3         tokenTruncate  1 3   10           public function testStringTooLong          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate  toooooooooooolooooong   10           public function testContainingNewline          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 n5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 n5 7 9 11 14   10            EDIT    Special UTF8 characters like      are not handled  Add  u  at the end of the REGEX to handle it    parts   preg split      s n r    u    string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE

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It s surprising how tricky it is to find the perfect solution to this problem   I haven t yet found an answer on this page that doesn t fail in at least some situations  especially if the string contains newlines or tabs  or if the word break is anything other than a space  or if the string has UTF-8 multibyte characters    Here is a simple solution that works in all cases   There were similar answers here  but the  s  modifier is important if you want it to work with multi-line input  and the  u  modifier makes it correctly evaluate UTF-8 multibyte characters   function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount         if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match   return  match 0       return  s      One possible edge case with this    if the string doesn t have any whitespace at all in the first  characterCount characters  it will return the entire string   If you prefer it forces a break at  characterCount even if it isn t a word boundary  you can use this   function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount         if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match   return  match 0       return mb substr  return  0   characterCount       One last option  if you want to have it add ellipsis if it truncates the string      function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount   addEllipsis                   return    s      if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match             return    match 0       else          return   mb substr  return  0   characterCount       if  strlen  s   gt  strlen  return    return     addEllipsis      return  return

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Keep in mind whenever you re splitting by  word  anywhere that some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not use a space character to split words  Also  a malicious user could simply enter text without any spaces  or using some Unicode look-alike to the standard space character  in which case any solution you use may end up displaying the entire text anyway  A way around this may be to check the string length after splitting it on spaces as normal  then  if the string is still above an abnormal limit - maybe 225 characters in this case - going ahead and splitting it dumbly at that limit   One more caveat with things like this when it comes to non-ASCII characters  strings containing them may be interpreted by PHP s standard strlen   as being longer than they really are  because a single character may take two or more bytes instead of just one  If you just use the strlen   substr   functions to split strings  you may split a string in the middle of a character  When in doubt  mb strlen   mb substr   are a little more foolproof

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I find this works   function abbreviate string to whole word  string  max length  buffer     if  strlen  string  gt  max length         string cropped substr  string 0  max length- buffer        last space strrpos  string cropped            if   last space gt 0             string cropped substr  string cropped 0  last space              abbreviated string  string cropped   amp nbsp         else        abbreviated string  string     return  abbreviated string       The buffer allows you to adjust the length of the returned string

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I believe this is the easiest way to do it    lines   explode       wordwrap  string   length            newstring    lines 0       amp bull   amp bull   amp bull      I m using the special characters to split the text and cut it

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a looonnng string      str    quot Le Lorem Ipsum est simplement du  faux texte employ   dans la composition et  la mise en page avant impression   Le Lorem Ipsum est le faux texte standard de  l imprimerie depuis les ann  es 1500  quand un  imprimeur anonyme assembla ensemble des morceaux  de texte pour r  aliser un livre sp  cimen de polices de texte  Il n a pas fait que survivre cinq si  cles  mais s est aussi adapt      la bureautique informatique  sans que son contenu n en soit modifi    Il a   t    popularis   dans les ann  es 1960 gr  ce    la vente  de feuilles Letraset contenant des passages du Lorem Ipsum  et  plus r  cemment  par son inclusion  dans des applications de mise en page de texte   comme Aldus PageMaker quot      number chars to cut  number to cut   300     string truncated in one line    truncated string    substr  str  0  strrpos substr  str  0   number to cut             test return echo  truncated string      variation  add ellipsis    echo  truncated string             output      Le Lorem Ipsum est simplement du  faux texte employ   dans la composition et  la mise en page avant impression   Le Lorem Ipsum est le faux texte standard de  l imprimerie depuis les ann  es 1500  quand un  imprimeur anonyme assembla ensemble des morceaux  de texte pour r  aliser un livre

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I create a function more similar to substr  and using the idea of  Dave   function substr full word  str   start   end        pos ini     start    0     start   stripos substr  str   start   end           start      if strlen  str   gt   end    pos end   strrpos substr  str  0    end   1               IF STRING SIZE IS LESSER THAN END     if empty  pos end     pos end    end       FALLBACK     return substr  str   pos ini   pos end       Ps   The full length cut may be less than substr

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Here you can try this  substr   str  0  strpos  str       200

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I would use the preg match function to do this  as what you want is a pretty simple expression    matches   array     result   preg match       1 199    s  i    text   matches     The expression means  match any substring starting from the beginning of length 1-200 that ends with a space   The result is in  result  and the match is in  matches  That takes care of your original question  which is specifically ending on any space  If you want to make it end on newlines  change the regular expression to    result   preg match       1 199    n  i    text   matches

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This will return the first 200 characters of words   preg replace    s    S            substr  string  0  201

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This is a small fix for mattmac s answer   preg replace    s    S            substr  string        0  201      The only difference is to add a space at the end of  string  This ensures the last word isn t cut off as per ReX357 s comment   I don t have enough rep points to add this as a comment

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Use strpos and substr    lt  php   longString    I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text     truncated   substr  longString 0 strpos  longString     30     echo  truncated    This will give you a string truncated at the first space after 30 characters

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I would use the preg match function to do this  as what you want is a pretty simple expression    matches   array     result   preg match       1 199    s  i    text   matches     The expression means  match any substring starting from the beginning of length 1-200 that ends with a space   The result is in  result  and the match is in  matches  That takes care of your original question  which is specifically ending on any space  If you want to make it end on newlines  change the regular expression to    result   preg match       1 199    n  i    text   matches

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Keep in mind whenever you re splitting by  word  anywhere that some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not use a space character to split words  Also  a malicious user could simply enter text without any spaces  or using some Unicode look-alike to the standard space character  in which case any solution you use may end up displaying the entire text anyway  A way around this may be to check the string length after splitting it on spaces as normal  then  if the string is still above an abnormal limit - maybe 225 characters in this case - going ahead and splitting it dumbly at that limit   One more caveat with things like this when it comes to non-ASCII characters  strings containing them may be interpreted by PHP s standard strlen   as being longer than they really are  because a single character may take two or more bytes instead of just one  If you just use the strlen   substr   functions to split strings  you may split a string in the middle of a character  When in doubt  mb strlen   mb substr   are a little more foolproof

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While this is a rather old question  I figured I would provide an alternative  as it was not mentioned and valid for PHP 4 3    You can use the sprintf family of functions to truncate text  by using the    Ns precision modifier      A period   followed by an integer who s meaning depends on the   specifier          For e  E  f and F specifiers  this is the number of digits to be    printed after the decimal point  by default  this is 6       For g and G    specifiers  this is the maximum number of significant digits to be    printed    For s specifier  it acts as a cutoff point  setting a maximum character limit to the string      Simple Truncation https   3v4l org QJDJU   string    0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ   var dump sprintf    10s    string      Result  string 10   0123456789      Expanded Truncation https   3v4l org FCD21  Since sprintf functions similarly to substr and will partially cut off words  The below approach will ensure words are not cutoff by using strpos wordwrap        break       break    with a special delimiter  This allows us to retrieve the position and ensure we do not match on standard sentence structures   Returning a string without partially cutting off words and that does not exceed the specified width  while preserving line-breaks if desired   function truncate  string   width   on     break          if  strlen  string   gt   width  amp  amp  false       p   strpos wordwrap  string   width   on    on               string   sprintf        p    s    string             return  string    var dump truncate  0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ   20     var dump truncate  Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry    20     var dump truncate  Lorem Ipsum nis simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry    20      Result      string 36   0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ    string 14   Lorem Ipsum is   string 14   Lorem Ipsum is        Results using wordwrap  string   width  or strtok wordwrap  string   width     n       string 14   Lorem Ipsum is  string 11   Lorem Ipsum

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This is how i did it    string    I appreciate your service  amp  idea to provide the branded toys at a fair rent price  This is really a wonderful to watch the kid not just playing with variety of toys but learning faster compare to the other kids who are not using the BooksandBeyond service  We wish you all the best    print r substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string  250     n

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Use this    the following code will remove      If you have anyother character or sub-string  you may use that instead of      substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0   comparingLength              if you have another string account for      substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0   comparingLength-strlen  currentString

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Here you go   function neat trim  str   n   delim              len   strlen  str      if   len  gt   n           preg match           n          b     str   matches          return rtrim  matches 1      delim          else          return  str

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Here you can try this  substr   str  0  strpos  str       200

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Use strpos and substr    lt  php   longString    I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text     truncated   substr  longString 0 strpos  longString     30     echo  truncated    This will give you a string truncated at the first space after 30 characters

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Based on  Justin Poliey s regex      Trim very long text to 120 characters  Add an ellipsis if the text is trimmed  if strlen  very long text   gt  120       matches   array      preg match       1 120    s  i    very long text   matches      trimmed text    matches 0

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This is how i did it    string    I appreciate your service  amp  idea to provide the branded toys at a fair rent price  This is really a wonderful to watch the kid not just playing with variety of toys but learning faster compare to the other kids who are not using the BooksandBeyond service  We wish you all the best    print r substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string  250     n

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It s surprising how tricky it is to find the perfect solution to this problem   I haven t yet found an answer on this page that doesn t fail in at least some situations  especially if the string contains newlines or tabs  or if the word break is anything other than a space  or if the string has UTF-8 multibyte characters    Here is a simple solution that works in all cases   There were similar answers here  but the  s  modifier is important if you want it to work with multi-line input  and the  u  modifier makes it correctly evaluate UTF-8 multibyte characters   function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount         if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match   return  match 0       return  s      One possible edge case with this    if the string doesn t have any whitespace at all in the first  characterCount characters  it will return the entire string   If you prefer it forces a break at  characterCount even if it isn t a word boundary  you can use this   function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount         if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match   return  match 0       return mb substr  return  0   characterCount       One last option  if you want to have it add ellipsis if it truncates the string      function wholeWordTruncate  s   characterCount   addEllipsis                   return    s      if  preg match      1  characterCount  b su    s   match             return    match 0       else          return   mb substr  return  0   characterCount       if  strlen  s   gt  strlen  return    return     addEllipsis      return  return

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Here is my function based on  Cd-MaN s approach   function shorten  string   width      if strlen  string   gt   width         string   wordwrap  string   width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n            return  string

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Keep in mind whenever you re splitting by  word  anywhere that some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not use a space character to split words  Also  a malicious user could simply enter text without any spaces  or using some Unicode look-alike to the standard space character  in which case any solution you use may end up displaying the entire text anyway  A way around this may be to check the string length after splitting it on spaces as normal  then  if the string is still above an abnormal limit - maybe 225 characters in this case - going ahead and splitting it dumbly at that limit   One more caveat with things like this when it comes to non-ASCII characters  strings containing them may be interpreted by PHP s standard strlen   as being longer than they really are  because a single character may take two or more bytes instead of just one  If you just use the strlen   substr   functions to split strings  you may split a string in the middle of a character  When in doubt  mb strlen   mb substr   are a little more foolproof

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Added IF ELSEIF statements to the code from Dave and AmalMurali for handling strings without spaces  if   strpos  string           false   amp  amp   strlen  string   gt  200           WidgetText   substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0  200              elseif  strlen  string   gt  200         WidgetText   substr  string  0  200

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This will return the first 200 characters of words   preg replace    s    S            substr  string  0  201

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I would use the preg match function to do this  as what you want is a pretty simple expression    matches   array     result   preg match       1 199    s  i    text   matches     The expression means  match any substring starting from the beginning of length 1-200 that ends with a space   The result is in  result  and the match is in  matches  That takes care of your original question  which is specifically ending on any space  If you want to make it end on newlines  change the regular expression to    result   preg match       1 199    n  i    text   matches

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I know this is old  but     function  truncate  str   limit        if strlen  str   lt   limit          return  str       uid   uniqid        return array shift explode  uid  wordwrap  str   limit   uid

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Use strpos and substr    lt  php   longString    I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text     truncated   substr  longString 0 strpos  longString     30     echo  truncated    This will give you a string truncated at the first space after 30 characters

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Here you go   function neat trim  str   n   delim              len   strlen  str      if   len  gt   n           preg match           n          b     str   matches          return rtrim  matches 1      delim          else          return  str

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Use strpos and substr    lt  php   longString    I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text     truncated   substr  longString 0 strpos  longString     30     echo  truncated    This will give you a string truncated at the first space after 30 characters

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May be this will help someone    lt  php       string    Your line of text        spl   preg match          d -            w       d -             50      string   matches       if  isset  matches 0               matches 0                    echo   lt br   gt      matches 0         else           echo   lt br   gt      string           gt

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I believe this is the easiest way to do it    lines   explode       wordwrap  string   length            newstring    lines 0       amp bull   amp bull   amp bull      I m using the special characters to split the text and cut it

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Cut the string without breaking any words  UTF-8 aware    param string  str The text string to split   param integer  start The start position  defaults to 0   param integer  words The number of words to extract  defaults to 15    function wordCutString  str   start   0   words   15          arr   preg split     s        str   words 1        arr   array slice  arr   start   words       return join       arr       Usage    input    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisicing elit  sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna liqua  Ut enim ad minim veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat    echo wordCutString  input  0  10      This will output first 10 words   The preg split function is used to split a string into substrings  The boundaries along which the string is to be split  are specified using a regular expressions pattern   preg split function takes 4 parameters  but only the first 3 are relevant to us right now   First Parameter     Pattern The first parameter is the regular expressions pattern along which the string is to be split  In our case  we want to split the string across word boundaries  Therefore we use a predefined character class  s which matches white space characters such as space  tab  carriage return and line feed   Second Parameter     Input String The second parameter is the long text string which we want to split   Third Parameter     Limit The third parameter specifies the number of substrings which should be returned  If you set the limit to n  preg split will return an array of n elements  The first n-1 elements will contain the substrings  The last  n th  element will contain the rest of the string

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shorttext   preg replace       s S  1 200    s     s S        1    fulltext     Description      - start from beginning of string    s S  1 200   - get from 1 to 200 of any character   s    - not include spaces at the end of short text so we can avoid word     instead of word      s S   - match all other content   Tests    regex101 com let s add to or few other r regex101 com orrrr exactly 200 characters  regex101 com after fifth r orrrrr excluded    Enjoy

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Ok so I got another version of this based on the above answers but taking more things in account utf-8   n and  amp nbsp      also a line stripping the wordpress shortcodes commented if used with wp   function neatest trim  content   chars     if  strlen  content   gt   chars            content   str replace   amp nbsp          content        content   str replace   n        content          use with wordpress            content   strip tags strip shortcodes trim  content          content   strip tags trim  content         content   preg replace    s    S            mb substr  content  0   chars          content   trim  content               return  content

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This will return the first 200 characters of words   preg replace    s    S            substr  string  0  201

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I have a function that does almost what you want  if you ll do a few edits  it will fit exactly    lt  php function stripByWords  string  length  delimiter     lt br gt           words array   explode      string        strlen   0       return           foreach  words array as  word             strlen    mb strlen  word  utf8             return     word              if  strlen  gt    length                 strlen   0               return     delimiter                      return  return      gt

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WidgetText   substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0  200            And there you have it     a reliable method of truncating any string to the nearest whole word  while staying under the maximum string length   I ve tried the other examples above and they did not produce the desired results

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By using the wordwrap function  It splits the texts in multiple lines such that the maximum width is the one you specified  breaking at word boundaries  After splitting  you simply take the first line   substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string   your desired width     n       One thing this oneliner doesn t handle is the case when the text itself is shorter than the desired width  To handle this edge-case  one should do something like   if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width          string   wordwrap  string   your desired width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n           The above solution has the problem of prematurely cutting the text if it contains a newline before the actual cutpoint  Here a version which solves this problem   function tokenTruncate  string   your desired width       parts   preg split      s n r        string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE      parts count   count  parts       length   0     last part   0    for     last part  lt   parts count     last part         length    strlen  parts  last part        if   length  gt   your desired width    break           return implode array slice  parts  0   last part        Also  here is the PHPUnit testclass used to test the implementation   class TokenTruncateTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase     public function testBasic          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 5 7 9 11 14   10           public function testEmptyString          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate     10           public function testShortString          this- gt assertEquals  1 3         tokenTruncate  1 3   10           public function testStringTooLong          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate  toooooooooooolooooong   10           public function testContainingNewline          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 n5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 n5 7 9 11 14   10            EDIT    Special UTF8 characters like      are not handled  Add  u  at the end of the REGEX to handle it    parts   preg split      s n r    u    string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE

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Here is my function based on  Cd-MaN s approach   function shorten  string   width      if strlen  string   gt   width         string   wordwrap  string   width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n            return  string

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I know this is old  but     function  truncate  str   limit        if strlen  str   lt   limit          return  str       uid   uniqid        return array shift explode  uid  wordwrap  str   limit   uid

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I create a function more similar to substr  and using the idea of  Dave   function substr full word  str   start   end        pos ini     start    0     start   stripos substr  str   start   end           start      if strlen  str   gt   end    pos end   strrpos substr  str  0    end   1               IF STRING SIZE IS LESSER THAN END     if empty  pos end     pos end    end       FALLBACK     return substr  str   pos ini   pos end       Ps   The full length cut may be less than substr

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a looonnng string      str    quot Le Lorem Ipsum est simplement du  faux texte employ   dans la composition et  la mise en page avant impression   Le Lorem Ipsum est le faux texte standard de  l imprimerie depuis les ann  es 1500  quand un  imprimeur anonyme assembla ensemble des morceaux  de texte pour r  aliser un livre sp  cimen de polices de texte  Il n a pas fait que survivre cinq si  cles  mais s est aussi adapt      la bureautique informatique  sans que son contenu n en soit modifi    Il a   t    popularis   dans les ann  es 1960 gr  ce    la vente  de feuilles Letraset contenant des passages du Lorem Ipsum  et  plus r  cemment  par son inclusion  dans des applications de mise en page de texte   comme Aldus PageMaker quot      number chars to cut  number to cut   300     string truncated in one line    truncated string    substr  str  0  strrpos substr  str  0   number to cut             test return echo  truncated string      variation  add ellipsis    echo  truncated string             output      Le Lorem Ipsum est simplement du  faux texte employ   dans la composition et  la mise en page avant impression   Le Lorem Ipsum est le faux texte standard de  l imprimerie depuis les ann  es 1500  quand un  imprimeur anonyme assembla ensemble des morceaux  de texte pour r  aliser un livre

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Use this    the following code will remove      If you have anyother character or sub-string  you may use that instead of      substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0   comparingLength              if you have another string account for      substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0   comparingLength-strlen  currentString

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The following solution was born when I ve noticed a  break parameter of wordwrap function      string wordwrap   string  str    int  width   75    string  break       n     bool  cut   false         Here is the solution          Truncates the given string at the specified length         param string  str The input string      param int  width The number of chars at which the string will be truncated      return string     function truncate  str   width        return strtok wordwrap  str   width       n      n        Example  1   print truncate  This is very long string with many chars    25     The above example will output   This is very long string      Example  2   print truncate  This is short string    25     The above example will output   This is short string

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While this is a rather old question  I figured I would provide an alternative  as it was not mentioned and valid for PHP 4 3    You can use the sprintf family of functions to truncate text  by using the    Ns precision modifier      A period   followed by an integer who s meaning depends on the   specifier          For e  E  f and F specifiers  this is the number of digits to be    printed after the decimal point  by default  this is 6       For g and G    specifiers  this is the maximum number of significant digits to be    printed    For s specifier  it acts as a cutoff point  setting a maximum character limit to the string      Simple Truncation https   3v4l org QJDJU   string    0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ   var dump sprintf    10s    string      Result  string 10   0123456789      Expanded Truncation https   3v4l org FCD21  Since sprintf functions similarly to substr and will partially cut off words  The below approach will ensure words are not cutoff by using strpos wordwrap        break       break    with a special delimiter  This allows us to retrieve the position and ensure we do not match on standard sentence structures   Returning a string without partially cutting off words and that does not exceed the specified width  while preserving line-breaks if desired   function truncate  string   width   on     break          if  strlen  string   gt   width  amp  amp  false       p   strpos wordwrap  string   width   on    on               string   sprintf        p    s    string             return  string    var dump truncate  0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ   20     var dump truncate  Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry    20     var dump truncate  Lorem Ipsum nis simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry    20      Result      string 36   0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ    string 14   Lorem Ipsum is   string 14   Lorem Ipsum is        Results using wordwrap  string   width  or strtok wordwrap  string   width     n       string 14   Lorem Ipsum is  string 11   Lorem Ipsum

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WidgetText   substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0  200            And there you have it     a reliable method of truncating any string to the nearest whole word  while staying under the maximum string length   I ve tried the other examples above and they did not produce the desired results

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Here you go   function neat trim  str   n   delim              len   strlen  str      if   len  gt   n           preg match           n          b     str   matches          return rtrim  matches 1      delim          else          return  str

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This will return the first 200 characters of words   preg replace    s    S            substr  string  0  201

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Based on  Justin Poliey s regex      Trim very long text to 120 characters  Add an ellipsis if the text is trimmed  if strlen  very long text   gt  120       matches   array      preg match       1 120    s  i    very long text   matches      trimmed text    matches 0

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Cut the string without breaking any words  UTF-8 aware    param string  str The text string to split   param integer  start The start position  defaults to 0   param integer  words The number of words to extract  defaults to 15    function wordCutString  str   start   0   words   15          arr   preg split     s        str   words 1        arr   array slice  arr   start   words       return join       arr       Usage    input    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisicing elit  sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna liqua  Ut enim ad minim veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat    echo wordCutString  input  0  10      This will output first 10 words   The preg split function is used to split a string into substrings  The boundaries along which the string is to be split  are specified using a regular expressions pattern   preg split function takes 4 parameters  but only the first 3 are relevant to us right now   First Parameter     Pattern The first parameter is the regular expressions pattern along which the string is to be split  In our case  we want to split the string across word boundaries  Therefore we use a predefined character class  s which matches white space characters such as space  tab  carriage return and line feed   Second Parameter     Input String The second parameter is the long text string which we want to split   Third Parameter     Limit The third parameter specifies the number of substrings which should be returned  If you set the limit to n  preg split will return an array of n elements  The first n-1 elements will contain the substrings  The last  n th  element will contain the rest of the string

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Added IF ELSEIF statements to the code from Dave and AmalMurali for handling strings without spaces  if   strpos  string           false   amp  amp   strlen  string   gt  200           WidgetText   substr  string  0  strrpos substr  string  0  200              elseif  strlen  string   gt  200         WidgetText   substr  string  0  200

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By using the wordwrap function  It splits the texts in multiple lines such that the maximum width is the one you specified  breaking at word boundaries  After splitting  you simply take the first line   substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string   your desired width     n       One thing this oneliner doesn t handle is the case when the text itself is shorter than the desired width  To handle this edge-case  one should do something like   if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width          string   wordwrap  string   your desired width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n           The above solution has the problem of prematurely cutting the text if it contains a newline before the actual cutpoint  Here a version which solves this problem   function tokenTruncate  string   your desired width       parts   preg split      s n r        string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE      parts count   count  parts       length   0     last part   0    for     last part  lt   parts count     last part         length    strlen  parts  last part        if   length  gt   your desired width    break           return implode array slice  parts  0   last part        Also  here is the PHPUnit testclass used to test the implementation   class TokenTruncateTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase     public function testBasic          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 5 7 9 11 14   10           public function testEmptyString          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate     10           public function testShortString          this- gt assertEquals  1 3         tokenTruncate  1 3   10           public function testStringTooLong          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate  toooooooooooolooooong   10           public function testContainingNewline          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 n5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 n5 7 9 11 14   10            EDIT    Special UTF8 characters like      are not handled  Add  u  at the end of the REGEX to handle it    parts   preg split      s n r    u    string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE

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Keep in mind whenever you re splitting by  word  anywhere that some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not use a space character to split words  Also  a malicious user could simply enter text without any spaces  or using some Unicode look-alike to the standard space character  in which case any solution you use may end up displaying the entire text anyway  A way around this may be to check the string length after splitting it on spaces as normal  then  if the string is still above an abnormal limit - maybe 225 characters in this case - going ahead and splitting it dumbly at that limit   One more caveat with things like this when it comes to non-ASCII characters  strings containing them may be interpreted by PHP s standard strlen   as being longer than they really are  because a single character may take two or more bytes instead of just one  If you just use the strlen   substr   functions to split strings  you may split a string in the middle of a character  When in doubt  mb strlen   mb substr   are a little more foolproof

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The following solution was born when I ve noticed a  break parameter of wordwrap function      string wordwrap   string  str    int  width   75    string  break       n     bool  cut   false         Here is the solution          Truncates the given string at the specified length         param string  str The input string      param int  width The number of chars at which the string will be truncated      return string     function truncate  str   width        return strtok wordwrap  str   width       n      n        Example  1   print truncate  This is very long string with many chars    25     The above example will output   This is very long string      Example  2   print truncate  This is short string    25     The above example will output   This is short string

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This is a small fix for mattmac s answer   preg replace    s    S            substr  string        0  201      The only difference is to add a space at the end of  string  This ensures the last word isn t cut off as per ReX357 s comment   I don t have enough rep points to add this as a comment

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I find this works   function abbreviate string to whole word  string  max length  buffer     if  strlen  string  gt  max length         string cropped substr  string 0  max length- buffer        last space strrpos  string cropped            if   last space gt 0             string cropped substr  string cropped 0  last space              abbreviated string  string cropped   amp nbsp         else        abbreviated string  string     return  abbreviated string       The buffer allows you to adjust the length of the returned string

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I would use the preg match function to do this  as what you want is a pretty simple expression    matches   array     result   preg match       1 199    s  i    text   matches     The expression means  match any substring starting from the beginning of length 1-200 that ends with a space   The result is in  result  and the match is in  matches  That takes care of your original question  which is specifically ending on any space  If you want to make it end on newlines  change the regular expression to    result   preg match       1 199    n  i    text   matches

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May be this will help someone    lt  php       string    Your line of text        spl   preg match          d -            w       d -             50      string   matches       if  isset  matches 0               matches 0                    echo   lt br   gt      matches 0         else           echo   lt br   gt      string           gt

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I have a function that does almost what you want  if you ll do a few edits  it will fit exactly    lt  php function stripByWords  string  length  delimiter     lt br gt           words array   explode      string        strlen   0       return           foreach  words array as  word             strlen    mb strlen  word  utf8             return     word              if  strlen  gt    length                 strlen   0               return     delimiter                      return  return      gt

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shorttext   preg replace       s S  1 200    s     s S        1    fulltext     Description      - start from beginning of string    s S  1 200   - get from 1 to 200 of any character   s    - not include spaces at the end of short text so we can avoid word     instead of word      s S   - match all other content   Tests    regex101 com let s add to or few other r regex101 com orrrr exactly 200 characters  regex101 com after fifth r orrrrr excluded    Enjoy

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Here you go   function neat trim  str   n   delim              len   strlen  str      if   len  gt   n           preg match           n          b     str   matches          return rtrim  matches 1      delim          else          return  str

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By using the wordwrap function  It splits the texts in multiple lines such that the maximum width is the one you specified  breaking at word boundaries  After splitting  you simply take the first line   substr  string  0  strpos wordwrap  string   your desired width     n       One thing this oneliner doesn t handle is the case when the text itself is shorter than the desired width  To handle this edge-case  one should do something like   if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width          string   wordwrap  string   your desired width        string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n           The above solution has the problem of prematurely cutting the text if it contains a newline before the actual cutpoint  Here a version which solves this problem   function tokenTruncate  string   your desired width       parts   preg split      s n r        string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE      parts count   count  parts       length   0     last part   0    for     last part  lt   parts count     last part         length    strlen  parts  last part        if   length  gt   your desired width    break           return implode array slice  parts  0   last part        Also  here is the PHPUnit testclass used to test the implementation   class TokenTruncateTest extends PHPUnit Framework TestCase     public function testBasic          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 5 7 9 11 14   10           public function testEmptyString          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate     10           public function testShortString          this- gt assertEquals  1 3         tokenTruncate  1 3   10           public function testStringTooLong          this- gt assertEquals           tokenTruncate  toooooooooooolooooong   10           public function testContainingNewline          this- gt assertEquals  1 3 n5 7 9          tokenTruncate  1 3 n5 7 9 11 14   10            EDIT    Special UTF8 characters like      are not handled  Add  u  at the end of the REGEX to handle it    parts   preg split      s n r    u    string  null  PREG SPLIT DELIM CAPTURE

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I used this before   lt  php      your desired width   200       string    var- gt content      if  strlen  string   gt   your desired width             string   wordwrap  string   your desired width            string   substr  string  0  strpos  string    n        More                echo  string    gt

[php] How to Truncate a string in PHP to the word closest to a certain number of characters?

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