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I saw this post which had my ans: MySQL Select Query - Get only first 10 characters of a value How to do the same using php ?
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This can be done by substr function. Following is the working example with code.
http://sugunan.net/demo/substr.php
<?php
$full_str = "Hello, this is my subject and how are you";
$firstn = substr ( $full_str , 0 ,10 );
echo $firstn;
?>
Use the substr() function. Read about it here http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php
$shortString = substr($longString,$startPoint,$numberOfCharactersToReturn);
eg: substr('abcdefg',0,3);
// returns 'abc'