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

I'm not sure if this is the fastest solution, but it looks like it is the shortest one:

$result = current(explode("\n", wordwrap($str, $width, "...\n")));

P.S. See some examples here https://stackoverflow.com/a/17852480/131337