Display a certain amount of characters from a string?

[Stinger]

Hi there

I only recently found this website but wow what a great resource it is!

I am currently working on a new project of my own, a website and forum for the model of car I own and love; and on the home page (index.php) I have a piece of code which calls a file that then displays a number of the latest threads from my forums.

This all works fine and it displays the 5 newest threads nicely. The problem I have is some of the thread topics it displays on the home page are too long and it busts the table or goes to a second line which I don't want to happen.

Is there a way I can have it only display a certain amount of characters instead of the entire thread topic. Something like this; "This is the name of my new threa...." and stop when it reaches the limit.

If you want to see the code im using please let me know.


Thanks

Ryan

[Schmoopy]

Hi, this is where the substr() function would come in useful : http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php

You can use it to take a string and then only return part of it, like so:



<?php
$thread = "I am a thread, I am really long and need to be shortened";

// Say you want to only return 50 characters you would do the following

$val = substr($thread, 0, 50) . "...";

// Translated it would be - Start at the beginning of $thread and move along 50 characters, and discard the rest


echo $val;
// This returns : I am a thread, I am really long and need to be sho...




Hope that helps you.

Edit: Welcome to the forums! :D

[Stinger]

Awesome stuff mate, thanks for that; i will give it a try shortly!:D