[Resolved] Shorten output string

[zzz]

I am building dynamically drop-down menu. Some of the strings of text that end up as <OPTION> line in the loop are too long. How can I shorten that output to say, 50 chars?

[travelbuff]

You need substr:

$short_text = substr($text, $start, $length);

or

 echo substr($text, $start, $length);

[zzz]

Thanks for the pointer, this is exactly what I needed.

I also found this handy function written by mancini at nextcode dot org:

//limit chars
  function limitch($value,$lenght){
         if (strlen($value) >= $lenght ){        

                 $limited = substr($value,0,$lenght);
                 $limited .= "...";                  

         }
         return $limited;
  }

[laserlight]

I also found this handy function written by mancini at nextcode dot org:

This might be somewhat more robust, as mancini's code fails if a length greater than the string length is somehow specified.

function limitch($str, $len) {
	if (strlen($str) > $len)
		return substr($str, 0, $len) . "...";
	else
		return $str;
}