PHP functions:trim middle

Description

This PHP function will reduce long strings to shorter strings, by trimming out the middle. It can be used on any string, but was inspired by the need to reduce URLs that are

http://super.really.long.urls/so/long/they/cannot/really_fit_in_one/field,then

I'd like to reduce the middle of the URL to "[...]"

http://super.really.long.urls[...]/really_fit_in_one/field,then

The field will look a bit nicer and still have useful information.

Bugs

The requested length must longer than the string to put in the center.

Source

<source lang="php"> <?php //***********************************************// // // this code is freeware // //***********************************************//

/***********************************************/ // echo trim_middle("this is a long string", 10); // thi[...]ng /***********************************************/ function trim_middle($string, $len = 33, $center = "[...]") {

if(strlen($string) <= $len) { return($string); } else { // for now, I'm not going to handle the case where $center is longer than $len $num_chars_to_keep = $len - strlen($center); $num_chars_to_keep_left = ceil($num_chars_to_keep / 2); $num_chars_to_keep_right = floor($num_chars_to_keep / 2); $left_string = substr($string,0,$num_chars_to_keep_left); $right_string = substr($string,-$num_chars_to_keep_right); return $left_string . $center . $right_string; } } ?> </source>

Why 33?

Because the URLs in our test system that *I* made happened to be 33 characters long

33 char test URLs