[RESOLVED] Shortening a PHP Variable

[mackgeek82]

I'm working on a project using an XML feed and PHP.

I'm able to grab the stories from the XML but I have an issue with the length - at 255 characters, they're still too long for what I need.

I need to be able to take the existing variable, read it into a new variable and stop at the next blank space after I've reached the number of characters I've specified.

So, for example, I'd read in 155 characters. After 155 characters, it'd finish off the current word and stop at the next blank space. I have to seek the next empty space because I can't cut it off mid-word.

Any thoughts? I'm stumped.

[etully]

Assume your long string is in a variable called $x.
Assume you have a variable called $max that states how long the string should be. (In your example, $max should be 155;

This line will chop $x down to be $max letters long but go until the end of the word that it was in the middle of:

$z = substr($x,0,$max).substr(substr($x,$max,strlen($x)-$max),0,strpos(substr($x,$max,strlen($x)-$max)," "));

[etully]

Or maybe this is more readable:

$y = strlen($x)-$max;
$w = substr($x,$max,$y);
$z = substr($x,0,$max).substr($w,0,strpos($w," "));

print "$z";

[mackgeek82]

Works great. Thanks!

I really need to brush up on my string manipulation skills. I knew there had to be something but I wasn't sure where to look.