first characters of a string

[andresbezem]

What function should I use if I want to print the first 50 characters from a string?

I know that substr works the other way around, it takes out of the string the first X numbers of characters, but I can not find the function that lets me KEEP them.

Thanks to all

[mtmosier]

Originally posted by andresbezem
What function should I use if I want to print the first 50 characters from a string?

I know that substr works the other way around, it takes out of the string the first X numbers of characters, but I can not find the function that lets me KEEP them.

Thanks to all

Huh? substr will give you the characters you specify. If you want the first 50 do substr($string, 0, 50)

[andresbezem]

I'm sorry, you are right.

Now, what I'm doing is to take a long string (an article) and print only the first 40 to 50 characters, but I need it to stop in a space, so it won't cut the word.

Do you know how can I do that?

Thanx

[bradgrafelman]

Umm... just spaces? Sure...

for($i = 5; $i < strlen($data); $i++) {
   if($data{$i} != chr(32) && $data{$i} != chr(160)) continue; else {
      $data = substr($data, 0, $i);
      break;
  }
}

Note that my above code checks for normal spaces and non-breaking spaces (ALT+0160 or ' ' in HTML).

The $data_short variable is the shortened string in this code.

[mtmosier]

That topic has come up a few times on these forums. Here's one thread, but you can search for more.