How can I 'cut' a string to a determined length?

Question

I need to receive a long string with lots of characters and 'cut' it to generate a string with the number of characters I determine, how can I do that?

Example:

$text = 'This is a long string with a lot of characters';

The $text string contains 46 characters in this example.

I need to generate a $newText string with only the 20 first characters, like this:

$newText = 'This is a long strin';

possible duplicate of [PHP - cut a string after X characters](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3161816/php-cut-a-string-after-x-characters) — animuson, Mar 23 '12 at 01:24
the number will be determined by me and will be a fixed number.. Thank you all guys, the substr did the job... — Lucas Matos, Mar 23 '12 at 01:25
Surprised that none of the answers have mentioned that plain `substr` is not sufficient for multibyte strings ... You may need to consult [`mb_substr`](http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-substr.php) and/or [`mb_strcut`](http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-strcut.php) — , Mar 23 '12 at 01:26
@rdlowrey, what is multibyte string? is it something about special characters like UTF8? My string contains special characters like á ê ù, should I use mb_substr instead of just substr? — Lucas Matos, Mar 23 '12 at 01:29
@LucasMatos The ASCII character set is very limited. You can't use it to display many international characters. Read more here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.mbstring.php — , Mar 23 '12 at 01:35

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 24 '22 at 14:58

5

Not a problem, use substr(). Using your variable names, to get the first 20 characters:

$newText = mb_substr($text, 0, 20, 'UTF-8');

This will get a substring of $text, starting at the beginning, stopping after 20 characters.

<edit>Updated to accomodate @rdlowrey suggestion and OP's character set.</edit>

edited Apr 24 '22 at 14:58

mickmackusa

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answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:18

Surreal Dreams

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You will do even better to set a variable with your cut string length instead of using a literal like 20. It's good for maintenance, trust me - much easier to to change $string_lenght than find every applicable place you used 20 when you realize you need it to be 25. – Surreal Dreams Mar 23 '12 at 01:48

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:19

3

you mean like this?

$newText = substr($text, 0, 20);

answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:19

dldnh

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score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

3

Have a look at PHP string functions, and in particular, substr:

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

Returns the portion of string specified by the start and length parameters.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:19

mathematical.coffee

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:19

2

Check out strlen and substr.

<?php

$text = 'This is a long string with a lot of characters';
echo 'the $text string contains ' . strlen($text) . ' characters in this example.';
$newText = substr($text, 0, 20);

?>

answered Mar 23 '12 at 01:19

chrisn

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 07 '12 at 12:08

0

$newText = mb_substr($text, 0, 20);

edited Jun 07 '12 at 12:08

Taryn

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answered Mar 23 '12 at 17:36

Lucas Matos

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How can I 'cut' a string to a determined length?

5 Answers5