Cutting off text after certain length

[Eiolon]

On my front page, I link to articles.  I want to use the beginning part of the article as the link but I need it to cut off after a certain amount of characters.  It would then have ... that the visitor could click on to view the entire article.

 

It's actually what PHPFreaks is doing on the main page of their new site.

 

Thanks for your help.

[jonsjava]

<?php
$content = "On my front page, I link to articles.  I want to use the beginning part of the article as the link but I need it to cut off after a certain amount of characters.  It would then have ... that the visitor could click on to view the entire article.

It's actually what PHPFreaks is doing on the main page of their new site.

Thanks for your help.";
$maxchars = 50;
$content = substr($content, 0, $maxchars);
$pos = strrpos($content, " ");
if ($pos>0) {
$content = substr($content, 0, $pos);
}
echo $content."...(read more)";

outputs:

On my front page, I link to articles.  I want to...(read more)

[discomatt]

I personally like to store a 'headline' in a dedicated row... where the author can summarize the article. If the author chooses not to use a headline, the script falls back and uses a mtheod like the above