Show first 25 characters or so of textarea

[sattman]

I want to do something you see all the time in forums, show a short bit of the
textarea followed by .... and linked to show the whole thread I can do the
linking part no prob, how do you show a limited amount of a text area followed
by the ......?



thanks

[Dan Bracuk]

With the left function followed by the periods and question mark.

Originally posted by: sattman
I want to do something you see all the time in forums, show a short bit of
the textarea followed by .... and linked to show the whole thread I can do the
linking part no prob, how do you show a limited amount of a text area followed
by the ......?



thanks

[mxstu]

sattman,

You might be interested in the FullLeft() udf at cflib.org. It uses regular
expressions to find whole words which is typically more efficient than looping.
The example below would produce the output:

Today's date is November 6, 2005. The ...

<!--- include the UDF --->
<cfinclude template="fullLeft.cfm">
<cfset shortText = fullLeft(fullText, 40)>
<cfoutput>#shortText#</cfoutput>
<cfif len(shortText) lt len(fullText)>...</cfif>