substr() exact length

[move3rd]

Hi,

$short_text = substr("$news_short", 0, 50);

This shortens $news_short but when I echo it each instance of $news_short is a diffferant length.

Does it not take spaces into account?

Thanks

[dalecosp]

Can you give a better example? My test:

<?

include 'functions.php';

$foo="We contacted you because the laptop hard ";
$bar="disk drive appears to be failing.  After about 15 minutes ";
$baz="or so of use, the drive begins making a repetitive clicking noise ";
$garply="and the operating system freezes; the only method of regaining control is to cycle the power.";

$fooed=substr($foo,0,20);
$barred=substr($bar,0,20);
$bazzed=substr($baz,0,20);
$garplyed=substr($garply,0,20);

echo "<font=\"courier\">";

echo $fooed;
lines(2);
echo $barred;
lines(2);
echo $bazzed;
lines(2);
echo $garplyed;

?>

lines() is just a local function for HTML breaks... 😉

Every line was 20 characters...

[move3rd]

Sorry didnt explain myself very well.

My code:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {

$news_short =''.stripslashes($row['newstext']).'';
$short_text = substr("$news_short", 0, 50);
$news_text = "$short_text"."...";

   if (isset($_GET['action'])) {} else { 
    $news .="".stripslashes($row['title'])."<br>$news_text"
	."<a href=\"news.php?action=full_news&artist=".stripslashes($row['artist']).
	"&news_id=".stripslashes($row['id'])."\">read more</a><br><br>";


                              }

You can see what it outputs here:
http://dev.junglejar.net/news.php?artist=gnosis

[dnast]

Both of those strings are 50 characters. It's just the font. You'll need to use a fixed-width font to get them to line up perfectly.

Simple example - 10 characters:

mmmmmmmmmm
nnnnnnnnnn
llllllllll

Also, if you're outputting more than one line can hold, word wrapping will make the lines uneven even if you use a fixed-width font. I'm not sure what you could do to make them align perfectly in that case.

[move3rd]

Simple example - 10 characters:

mmmmmmmmmm
nnnnnnnnnn
llllllllll

Thanks dnast