How do you cut off text after a certain amount of characters in PHP?

Question

I have two string that i want to limit to lets say the first 25 characters for example. Is there a way to cut off text after the 25th character and add a ... to the end of the s

Answer 1

$words=explode(' ', $string);
for($ii = 0,$j=0; $ii< 5 && $j < sizeof($words) ;$j++){
    $ii += strlen($words[$j]);
    $intro= $words[$j]. " ";    
}
$intro.= "...";

I know its to late, but if anyone else is returning to this page, this will do,