retrieve substring

[munaa80]

how can i display substring from a string, for example i want to display quarter the news i have and not display the whole news.
and i want to check that the last word displayed is not cut.

[ez4me2c3d]

so what's a quarter? 1/4 of the line count? 1/4 of the word count? 1/4 of the available space?

determine that first, then you can write 4 or 5 lines to trim the news variable.

<?php

$news = "Today we have had a Merry Christmas so far.";
$fourth = floor(strlen($news) / 4);

if ($news{$fourth} != " ") {
while ($news{$fourth} != " ") {
$fourth++;
}
}

echo substr($news, 0, $fourth) . ' <a href="more.html">...more</a>' . '<br /><br />';

?>

this works based on the number of letters in the news. also it wont cut off a word it will proceed to the end of the word.