td234
asked on
Truncate text by words
I posted this question and got an acceptable answer. I then noticed that the solution produced no results when the sample contained few words than the amount sought in the truncation.
I am trying to truncate a text field by a certain number of words. The truncation needs to be word boundries. Here is the solution I got:
$pat = '~^(\S+\s+(?=\S)){4}~' ;
$sub = "hello, foo-bar!\nbaz quux whatever" ;
preg_match($pat, $sub, $match = array());
echo "'", trim(array_shift($match)),
If the sample has more words than the number in the pattern (4 in this case) then this works beautifully. If the sample is shorter, it return nothing and I would like for it to return the original sample. I hope this makes sense.
Thanks for all your help.
I am trying to truncate a text field by a certain number of words. The truncation needs to be word boundries. Here is the solution I got:
$pat = '~^(\S+\s+(?=\S)){4}~' ;
$sub = "hello, foo-bar!\nbaz quux whatever" ;
preg_match($pat, $sub, $match = array());
echo "'", trim(array_shift($match)),
If the sample has more words than the number in the pattern (4 in this case) then this works beautifully. If the sample is shorter, it return nothing and I would like for it to return the original sample. I hope this makes sense.
Thanks for all your help.
ASKER
Thanks ykf2000, but your solutions counts the characters, not the words. Your statement would return true because of the first 4 characters in "hello" and I need to know if it has 4 words or less.
what about this:
$pat = '~^(\S+\s+(?=\S)){4}~' ;
$sub = "hello, foo-bar!\nbaz quux whatever" ;
preg_match($pat, $sub, $match = array());
if(strlen(trim(array_shift
{
$result = "'", trim(array_shift($match)),
}
else
{
$result = $sub;
}
echo $result;
$pat = '~^(\S+\s+(?=\S)){4}~' ;
$sub = "hello, foo-bar!\nbaz quux whatever" ;
preg_match($pat, $sub, $match = array());
if(strlen(trim(array_shift
{
$result = "'", trim(array_shift($match)),
}
else
{
$result = $sub;
}
echo $result;
ASKER
This did not work as is, but was close. AS written, this returned the X (4th) word when the IF statement was true. I had to repeat the preg_match before the first result.
ASKER
I am sure there is a cleaner way to do this than my modification to the above recomendation which has two regex's. Are there any regex experts out there with a solution?
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ASKER
YES! That is the answer I was looking for. Thank you very much.
$pat = '~^(\S+\s+(?=\S)){4}~' ;
$sub = "hello, foo-bar!\nbaz quux whatever" ;
if(strlen($sub) > 4)
{
preg_match($pat, $sub, $match = array());
$result = "'", trim(array_shift($match)),
}
else
{
$result = $sub;
}
echo $result;