Display snippet of text but not all

[Reeeece]

Sorry if this is too obvious or hard to understand.

 

I'm echoing a database value onto a webpage, the value in question is a large paragraph of text. I need it to only display the first 40 characters or so of that text, then trail off with a "..."

 

So the users will be able to click a 'More Info' button which will take them to a page containing the full paragraph of text.

 

I'm just not sure how to cut off the text after 40 characters.

 

Any help HUGELY appreciated

[Pikachu2000]

If it were me, I'd use MySQL's SUBSTRING() and CONCAT() functions. You could also use PHP's substr.

[litebearer]

A small teaser for you ...

//    remove double spaces from the contents
$doubles = "  ";
$contents = str_replace($doubles," ",$contents);

//    get the first xx words for the teaser
if (count(explode(" ", $contents))> $max_words) {
$contents = substr($contents, 0, strnpos($contents, " ", $max_words));
}
$contents = $contents . "...";