From: Mark Thomas <ruby@...>
Date: 2008-08-20T05:16:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Cut a string if length > n

On Aug 19, 11:25 am, Pål Bergström <p...@palbergstrom.com> wrote:
> What's the best way to cut a string if the length is above n characters?
> Is it slice, or is there any other convenient method? Trying to
> understand the string class from the docs but not sure which one to use.

Rails has a utf8-compatible helper called truncate, called like so:

truncate(text, length = 30, truncate_string = "...")
If text is longer than length, text will be truncated to the length of
length (defaults to 30) and the last characters will be replaced with
the truncate_string (defaults to "...").

And the implementation is:

  def truncate(text, length = 30, truncate_string = "...")
    if text
      l = length - truncate_string.chars.length
      chars = text.chars
      (chars.length > length ? chars[0...l] + truncate_string :
text).to_s
    end
  end

Where chars is a string method in Ruby 1.8.7 or greater.