PHP function substr() error

Question

When I use substr() I get a strange character at the end

$articleText = substr($articleText,0,500);

I have an output of 500 c

Answer 1

use this function, It worked for me

function substr_unicode($str, $s, $l = null) {
    return join("", array_slice(
        preg_split("//u", $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY), $s, $l));
}

Credits: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-substr.php#107698