Showing only a certain amount of characters in PHP

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24 of May2007

Say you want to post part of your blog on your front page, but only want to show the first 30 characters or so. This is way you do it:

 

<?php
$blog_content = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit."; 

//how many characters should be shown?
$maxchars = "30";

$blog_content = substr($blog_content, 0, $maxchars);

//add a "..." at the end of the entry
$blog_content = $blog_content . "..."
?>

This takes the $blog_content variable and cuts it down to 30 characters, and then adds a … at the end of it.