string to count characters in variable

[crawfd]

I'd like to post the first 15 characters the variable name $bericth in the example below. I don't want to set the varchar value in my database to a specific length because my variable is being used in another script to display full information. Any info would help, thanks!

	$print = "

	<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\">
	<tr>
	<td width=\"100%\"><a href=\"forum_read.php?id=$id\">$bericht</a></td>
	</tr>
	</table>\n\n

	";

[drawmack]

http://www.php.net/substr

[crawfd]

Thanks