cut text after (x) amount of characters

Question

This is in wordpress (not sure that makes a difference)

This bit of php outputs the post title

Answer 1

Another way to cut the string off at the end of a word is with a regex. This one is set to cut off at 100 characters or the nearest word break after 100 characters:

function firstXChars($string, $chars = 100)
{
    preg_match('/^.{0,' . $chars. '}(?:.*?)\b/iu', $string, $matches);
    return $matches[0];
}