Get first n characters of a string

Question

How can I get the first n characters of a string in PHP? What\'s the fastest way to trim a string to a specific number of characters, and append \'...\' if needed?

Answer 1

It's best to abstract you're code like so (notice the limit is optional and defaults to 10):

print limit($string);


function limit($var, $limit=10)
{
    if ( strlen($var) > $limit )
    {
        return substr($string, 0, $limit) . '...';
    }
    else
    {
        return $var;
    }
}