Hey all,

I have come up with some pretty outlandish solutions to this problem, but I feel like there has to be something elegant and simple out there.

I can easily cut a string after X# of characters, but whats the best way to cut it after a certain number of words, that or cut it after X# of characters and then round up if its in the middle of a word.

Basically I am trying to echo the first couple sentences of an article onto the homepage as a teaser.

Thanks

Like this, you mean?

create table cut (strTxt text);

insert into cut values ('Hey all,I have come up with some pretty outlandish solutions to this problem, but I feel like there has to be something elegant and simple out there. I can easily cut a string after X# of characters, but whats the best way to cut it after a certain number of words, that or cut it after X# of characters and then round up if its in the middle of a word.
');

SELECT LEFT(strtxt, locate(' ', strtxt,
locate(' ', strtxt,
locate(' ', strtxt) + 1) + 1) - 1)
from cut;

drop table cut;

I have been doing some more digging and this looks like the best solution:

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(field, ' ', 25) FROM tablename

field: the column in the database
' ': the character that it is looking for (in this case its a blank space since I want to limit the number of words)
25: the number of times it sees ' ' before cutting it off

Sometimes you overlook the simpliest solutions.
At least I did.