Trimming a block of text to the nearest word when a certain character limit is reached?

Question

Here is the question: How would your trim a block of text to the nearest word when a certain amount of characters have past. I\'m not trying to limit a certain number words

Answer 1

// Trim very long text to 120 characters. Add an ellipsis if the text is trimmed.
if(strlen($very_long_text) > 120) {
  $matches = array();
  preg_match("/^(.{1,120})[\s]/i", $very_long_text, $matches);
  $trimmed_text = $matches[0]. '...';
}