Why isn't striptags working?

[matbeard]

I'm using the following function to create a leadin to articles.

function snip($text, $maxTextLength)
	{
	global $abstract;
	$aspace=" ";
	//$abstract = strip_tags($text);
	$abstract = ereg_replace('<([^>]|\n)*>', '', $text);
	$abstract = substr(trim($text),0,$maxTextLength); 
	$abstract = substr($abstract,0,strlen($abstract)-strpos(strrev($abstract),$aspace));
	$abstract = $abstract .'...';
	}

It works, in as far as it creates $abstract which is a snippit of $text, cut off at $maxTextLength (a number of characters).

However, the striptags function didn't work, so I tried the ereg_replace funtion, and that doesn't work either.... I'm still getting <br /> and other tags in the resulting $abtract.

The snip function is in an included file, along with other functions which all work as expected.

If I move the striptags function to within the same page, it does seem to work - but I really need it where it is.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[Weedpacket]

Problem's in the next line:

$abstract = substr(trim($text),0,$maxTextLength); 

[matbeard]

Aaaaggghh! Shit.

Well spotted... it's always something simple. I've been tearing my hair out for hours over that.

Thanks very much.

Mat