How to Truncate a string in PHP to the word closest to a certain number of characters?

Question

I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text from a database and sends it out to a widget on a webpage. The original block of text can be a lengthy artic

Answer 1

I create a function more similar to substr, and using the idea of @Dave.

function substr_full_word($str, $start, $end){
    $pos_ini = ($start == 0) ? $start : stripos(substr($str, $start, $end), ' ') + $start;
    if(strlen($str) > $end){ $pos_end = strrpos(substr($str, 0, ($end + 1)), ' '); } // IF STRING SIZE IS LESSER THAN END
    if(empty($pos_end)){ $pos_end = $end; } // FALLBACK
    return substr($str, $pos_ini, $pos_end);
}

Ps.: The full length cut may be less than substr.