string processing-getting 20 words from a string

Question

I would like to know what method is good to get the first 20 words from an english sentence. I need to analyze its subject and verb before processing further. Because there are sentences that are useless so I don't need to analyze them, dump them instead :-D

Ok It's always better for the starter to start first (pss is there a proverb or saying that fits well my claim here in English - I am a very active English learner ;-D)

Here you go:

$array=explode($string," ");
$con=$array[0];
$i=0;
foreach($array as $v)
{
  if($i++ == 20){break;}
  $con.=" ".$v[i];
}

Oh yezzz, Anyone can help with neater function or method please ?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 21 '12 at 08:51

1

You can use welknown php function substr Here is the usage...

string substr ( string $string , int $start [, int $length ] )

answered Aug 21 '12 at 08:51

Vins

8,849
4
33
53

Bojangles · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-21T09:01:17.293

1

array_slice() will slice the array for you. Just specify the beginning and end elements:

$words = explode($string, ' ');
$firstTwenty = array_slice($words, 0, 20);

If you want to get really compact (but a little less readable), do this instead:

$twentyWords= array_slice(explode($string, ' '), 0, 20);

$twentyWords will be an array. If you want to concatenate it back into a string, just use implode():

$newString = implode(' ', $twentyWords);

edited Aug 21 '12 at 09:01

answered Aug 21 '12 at 08:54

Bojangles

99,427
50
170
208

+1 good explanation; note that `$twentyWords` will be an array, you may want to `implode()` if you are looking for a string – Colin Pickard Aug 21 '12 at 08:59

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 21 '12 at 08:56

You can try this function...

$first_twenty_words = wordlimit($string, 20);

function wordlimit($string, $length = 20) 
{ 
   $words = explode(' ', $string); 
   if (count($words) > $length) 
       return implode(' ', array_slice($words, 0, $length)); 
   else 
       return $string; 
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

0

This will split words using spaces as word boundaries and return the first 20:

implode(' ', array_slice(explode(' ', $sentence), 0, 20));

There are some occasions where word boundaries may not be spaces; you could also look at preg_match and \b.

Credit: How to select first 10 words of a sentence?

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Community

1
1

answered Aug 21 '12 at 08:57

Colin Pickard

45,724
13
98
148

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 21 '12 at 09:03

By this way you can get first 20 words of any string:

    $str = "this is a string and i want to slice string after 20 words.
this is a string and i want to slice string after 20 words";

    $strArray = explode(" ",$str);
    $strArray = array_slice($strArray,0 , 20);
    $string =  implode(" ",$strArray);
    echo $string;

string processing-getting 20 words from a string

5 Answers5