Get first n characters of a string

Question

How can I get the first n characters of a string in PHP? What\'s the fastest way to trim a string to a specific number of characters, and append \'...\' if needed?

Answer 1

The Multibyte extension can come in handy if you need control over the string charset.

$charset = 'UTF-8';
$length = 10;
$string = 'Hai to yoo! I like yoo soo!';
if(mb_strlen($string, $charset) > $length) {
  $string = mb_substr($string, 0, $length - 3, $charset) . '...';
}