Hard RegEx Limit title link by 19 chars add 2

MarkBad311

This is gonna be tuff. I have an existing function in my library that querys the db and generates these links depending on the 'bar' field .

**Problem I am making these results fit in to a one line button on a side naviagtion menu example :: www.eriescene.com. the second nav portion is two lines. some of the titles are too long.

**Solution use some kind of regular expression:

1.... starts from the begining of the title and counts in 19 characters

2.... and replaces the next two charcters with .. (two periods).

3.... Forgets about the rest.

 [color=#FF9900]Note: Must work on whitespace, letters, numbers, special characters.[/color]

Here is the Existing Link Generating PHP/MYSQL CODE

/////////////////////////////////////////////
//Links to single Events///////////////
///////////////////////////////////////////
function sidemenu($connection) {
global $nav_block;
$table_name = "events";
$sql = "SELECT id, bar FROM $table_name WHERE `date` BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 1 DAY) and DATE_ADD(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 20 DAY) ORDER BY 'bar'";
$result = @mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
$num  = @mysql_num_rows($result);
if ($num < 1) {
  $nav_block = "<p>I am sorry there is no results</p>";
} else { 
  $nav_block .= "<ul class=\"menu\">";
//if results are found loop through them and make a form selection block list.
  while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
    $id = $row['id'];
	$bar = $row['bar'];
	$nav_block .= "<li><a href=\"http://www.eriescene.com/index.php?id=$id\">$bar</a></li>";
   }
  $nav_block .= "</ul>";
  }
}

$bar is the variable we'll need to modify. something like

$bar = $preg_replace('findit,     limit it and add two period chacters,      $bar);

Try as I may stinkin regex's get me everytime. Thank you to anyone that can help me... As I can't get it right and it is way to complicated for my skill level :-) Thanks again

FatalError

You don't need RegExp for this one, you just need the substr() function. Do something like this:

$chars = 19; // This is the character length you want

$bar = substr($bar, 0, $chars) . '..';

Basically the substr() function returns the first 19 characters (or as defined by $char), so then you can just add two periods at the end.

See? It's that simple. No need for RegExp. 😛 Don't make these things more complicated than they really are, try to find the easy way around. 😉

MarkBad311

didn't really research substr(), cool that can work with many things. the day is saved! Many thanks