displaying first 20 characters

[robsgaming]

I was wanting to know how to display the first 20 characters of a mysql query then putting "..." after that.

For example say the result of the query is:

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The old man jumped over the fence. I couldn't believe how high he could jump. Suddenly, he fell and broke his hip and from then on he was in the nursing home. Ahhh the pity of the old man.

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Let's just say I wanted it to show:

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The old man jumped o...

---

How is this possible?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[NoFear]

try something like this:

$string = "The old man jumped over the fence. I couldn't believe how high he could jump. Suddenly, he fell and broke his hip and from then on he was in the nursing home. Ahhh the pity of the old man. ";

$substring=substr($string,0,20);

$stringwithdotsatend = $substring."...";

substr() returns the value of the string from starting point "0", and ending point "20" (characters, that is).