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

This is the simplest solution I know of...

substr($string,0,strrpos(substr($string,0,28),' ')).'...';