use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

my $str = <<STR;
just wondering how i can have perl display part of my long memo.  basically i
want the first lets say 255 charachters of the paragraph.  im really new to
perl so i don't know how i would come about this?...[ read more ]
STR

my $maxlen = 160;

cmpthese
    (
    -1,
        {
        'graff' => \&graff,
        'duff'  => \&duff,
        'jbrug' => \&jbrug,
        'jbrug2' => \&jbrug2,
        }
    );
    
sub graff {
my $txt = substr $str, 0, $maxlen;
}

sub duff {
my $txt = $str;
$txt =~ s/(.{1,$maxlen})\b.*/$1.../;
}

sub jbrug {
my $txt = $str;
$txt =~ m/.{$maxlen}/gs;
}

sub jbrug2 {
my @a = split("",$str);
my $txt="";
for (my $i=0; $i<$maxlen; $i++) {
   $txt .= $a[$i];
}

}

##</code><code>##

            Rate jbrug2   duff  jbrug  graff
jbrug2    3596/s     --   -98%   -99%  -100%
duff    153325/s  4164%     --   -78%   -94%
jbrug   689852/s 19086%   350%     --   -73%
graff  2525239/s 70130%  1547%   266%     --