selecting only xx number of chars or words?

mystrymaster

Is there a way that I could say just select the first 250 chars or say the first 50 words froma text field in the db?

if you can't select word count is there a way that I would be able to make it stop at the end of a word or when it encoutered a space after so many chars?

toma42

This is the truncate function from smarty (http://smarty.php.net)

<?php

/
Smarty plugin
-------------------------------------------------------------
Type: modifier
Name: truncate
Purpose: Truncate a string to a certain length if necessary,
optionally splitting in the middle of a word, and
appending the $etc string.
-------------------------------------------------------------
/
function smarty_modifier_truncate($string, $length = 80, $etc = '...',
$break_words = false)
{
if ($length == 0)
return '';

if (strlen($string) > $length) {
    $length -= strlen($etc);	
    if (!$break_words)
    $string = preg_replace('/\s+?(\S+)?$/', '', substr($string, 0, $length+1));

    return substr($string, 0, $length).$etc;
} else
    return $string;

}

/ vim: set expandtab: /

mystrymaster

thanks man that is exactly what I was looking for - the only thing that I don't understand is what does -= mean?

toma42

$var -= 2; means $var = $var -2

The same works for:
*=
/=
+=
++ means $var = $var +1
-- means $var = $var -1

it's all in the php documentation

mystrymaster

I saw all the otyher in ther but I didn't see the expression -= outside of the operator order