Trimming a string and adding to the end of it

Question

what i am trying to do is basically shorten down a peice of text and add "..." to the end if the text is too long. However (here is where it gets hairy) i only want to apply this, if the last character of the string was a SPACE. If it is NOT space, then i want to go through the string (Backwords) until i find a space, THEN when a space is found i will add "..." to it.

The reasoning to this is i dont want to add "..." to a word when its not finished, such as "wor..." i would rather it be "word...".

Here is what i have tried so far (NOTE: $row_object_title is just a string coming from a database, so its safe to assume that its just a random text):

if (strlen($row_object_title) > 50){
    // check for spaces
        $short = substr($row_object_title,50);

        $chr = substr($short,-1);
        $ascii = ord($chr);
        if ($ascii == "32"){
            $row_object_title .= "...";
        }else{  
            $x = 49;
            while($ascii !== "32"){
                $chr = substr($short,$x);
                $ascii = ord($chr);
                if ($ascii == "32"){
                    // we got a space!
                    $row_object_title .= "...";
                }
                $x = $x - 1;                        
            }

        }
}

Thanks for the help

UPDATE:

if (strlen($row_object_title) > 50){
    // check for spaces
        $short = substr($row_object_title,50);

        $chr = substr($short,-1);
        $ascii = ord($chr);
        if ($ascii == "32"){
            //$trim = "...";
            //$final = str_replace($short,$trim,$row_object_title);
            $row_object_title .= "...";
        }else{  
            $x = 49;
            while($ascii != "32"){
                $chr = substr($short,$x,1);
                $ascii = ord($chr);
                if ($ascii == "32"){
                    // we got a space!
                    $row_object_title .= "...";
                }
                $x = $x - 1;                        
            }

        }
}

SECOND UPDATE: Every one is posting their version of the script (thanks alot) but could you guys possibly try to fix mine instead of posting other ways of doing it?

http://www.php.net/manual/it/function.rtrim.php – VeNoMiS Mar 31 '14 at 13:49 — VeNoMiS, Mar 31 '14 at 13:49

Callidior · Answer 1 · 2014-03-31T14:29:21.633

ord() returns an integer, but you check the value of $ascii using !== and compare it with a string. As opposed to !=, !== is only true if the types of the operands match too.

In addition, to extract a single character from the string, specify a length for the substring:

$chr = substr($short,$x,1);

You may also index the string directly: $chr = $short{$x}

Edit: Found two flaws more:

The second line should be:

$short = substr($row_object_title, 0, 50);

(You've missed the offset before the length parameter.)

Furthermore you're appending '...' to the original string, not to the shortened version. Below is a complete version of the (hopefully) corrected script.

if (strlen($row_object_title) > 50){
    // check for spaces
        $short = substr($row_object_title,50);

        $chr = substr($short,-1);
        $ascii = ord($chr);
        if ($ascii == 32){
            $row_object_title = $short . "...";
        }else{  
            $x = 49;
            while($ascii != 32){
                $chr = substr($short,$x,1);
                $ascii = ord($chr);
                if ($ascii == 32){
                    // we got a space!
                    $row_object_title = substr($short, 0, $x) . "...";
                }
                $x = $x - 1;                        
            }

        }
}

Hello sir, please scroll up to my question, beneath everything you will find an update in my code after what you told me, however it still doesnt work, any ideas to what im doing wrong? — user3332590, Mar 31 '14 at 13:58

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 25 '14 at 07:35

I use the following function, can't remember where I found it. Clears HTML in text, and limit string to $limit characters, without breaking words.

function show_chopped_text($str, $limit)
{
    $regex = "/<\/?\w+((\s+\w+(\s*=\s*(?:\".*?\"|'.*?'|[^'\">\s]+))?)+\s*|\s*)\/?>/i";
    $strip_html = preg_replace($regex,'',$str);

    $rough_short_par = substr($strip_html, 0, $limit); 
    $last_space_pos = strrpos($rough_short_par, " ");
    $clean_short_par = substr($rough_short_par, 0, $last_space_pos);
    $clean_sentence = $clean_short_par . "..."; 
    return $clean_sentence;
}

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 31 '14 at 13:55

0

If I understand your problem correctly, this should do the trick:

// if string does *not* end with one or more whitespace characters
if(!preg_match('/\s+$/',$string)) {
    // replace everything after last group of one or more whitespaces with '...'
    $string = preg_replace('/(.*)\s+.*/','\1...',$string);
}

answered Mar 31 '14 at 13:55

lafor

12,472
4
32
35

doesnt work. not sure why – user3332590 Mar 31 '14 at 14:00

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 31 '14 at 14:01

$text = "This should just fit in! But if we make it longer, it won't ";
if (strlen($text) > 50) {
    $text = substr($text, 0, 50);
    for ($i = strlen($text) - 1; $i > 0; $i--) {
        if ($text[$i] === ' ' || $text[$i] === ',' || $text[$i] === '.' || $text[$i] === '!' || $text[$i] === '?') {
            $text = substr($text, 0, $i) . '... <b>Read More</b>';
            break;
        }
    }
}

Does the job for me (should add RegEx, but I'm not that great with those...).

Trimming a string and adding to the end of it

4 Answers4