Re: In search of a better way to trim string


No such thing as a small change
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Re: In search of a better way to trim string

by Not_a_Number (Prior)

on Jul 19, 2004 at 19:21 UTC ( [id://375662]=note: print w/replies, xml )

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in reply to In search of a better way to trim string

Sorry if this is a bit late, FWIW...

1) Most of the replies published (well, those that work :-) truncate strings that are exactly of the desired length, while your original version keeps these intact. Test case:

my $str = trim_length ( 'this sentence is 30 signs long', 30 );

If you use eg BrowserUK's code, this is easy to fix: just change

return $str if length $str < $n;

to:

return $str if length $str <= $n;

2) It might be an idea to strip off trailing whitespace, in order to avoid adding ' ...' to the end of a message that is essentially complete. My own solution, again FWIW, would be

sub trim_length {
   my ( $str, $desired_len ) = @_;
   $str =~ s/\s+$//; # Strip trailing whitespace
   return $str if length $str <= $desired_len;
   return sprintf "%.${desired_len}s ...", 
      substr $str, 0, ( rindex $str, ' ', $desired_len );
}
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