Reg expression needed??

Hi,

I've got an interesting question for those who can answer it.

I'm retrieving some content from a DB but I would like to get first couple sentenances from the content and display this, I don't for sure if I have to use a regular expression to do this, but any assistance would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Try using substr() instead. Using "substr(0,100,$str)" gets the first hundred characters of the $str variable, to which you can append "..." or some other marker indicating that users can click for more details.

Well,

If you do substr() once the information is in PHP you could be using extra system resources, it depends on the ammount of data retrieved.

I will better recommend using string functions from MySQL...

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(textfield,' ',3) as sentences FROM table where field='criteria'


That will give you the first 3 words from the text field, you can replace the "3" to fit your word-count preferences.

Hope it helps