print out characters

[boogyman]

Building a script for email processing, and I am having problems limiting the number of characters given for a certain field. the function will take 2 arguments, the input, and some length. it returns the string to a maximum of "length" characters.

function friendly($text, $length=1024) {
 for($i=0; $i<$length; $i++) {
   echo ____character____
 }
} 

I only want to print out 1 character at a time, until the limit is reached then it would end


so if i were to call

friendly("my name is josh", 5)

it would return "my na"

[thetestingsite]

Why not try taking out this part (in red) in the code:

function friendly($text, $length=1024) {
 for($i=0; $i<$length; $i++) {
   echo ____character____
 }
}

Then call the script like you have posted above.
Hope this helps.

[boogyman]

the 1024 is a default value, incase you dont pass anything, preventing the script from erroring, but if you pass a number into the argument it gets overwritten... what I am looking for help on is actually printing out the characters 1 at a time


and yes i have tried without the value, still havent been able to get the function to print out 1 character at a time

[Twey]

There's no need for this, the built-in substr() function will do just as well:

$tring = 'My name is Josh';
echo substr($tring, 0, 5);

[djr33]

Twey is right, but for the original, I'd use the function strlen($str), where $str is the string being accessed, to go about the for-loop, rather than an arbitrary value which, in the best case, wastes time, or, for a long string, won't finish the string.


EDIT: I just noticed your amusing string name. //laugh.

[boogyman]

WoW, talk about a brain cramp. thanks twey