How to get first x chars from a string, without cutting off the last word?

Question

I have the following string in a variable.

Stack Overflow is as frictionless and painless to use as we could make it.

I want to fetch first 28 characte

Answer 1

You can use the wordwrap() function, then explode on newline and take the first part:

$str = wordwrap($str, 28);
$str = explode("\n", $str);
$str = $str[0] . '...';