my $page_link;
if ($val[5]) {
    # construct link if value is not NULL (undef) or empty
    my $linktext = $val[5];
    $linktext = substr($linktext, 0, 35) . "..." . substr($linktext, -
+15)
        if length($linktext) > 53;

    $page_link = a ({-href => $val[5]}, $linktext);
}

### other variables here ### then

print " - $page_link" if defined ($page_link);
[download]

Update Fixed typo.

Update2 Added note about if condition.

Update3 Just noticed that in the root node the 5's are linked. Since they aren't in code blocks, I assumed that you typed $val[5] and they were turned into links without you realizing. Next time use the <code> tags. (OT, looking at all the updates I've done, I should probably stop popping those penguin mints... ;-)

Thanks so much! Your fix works great :-) -Bob p.s. Thanks to everybody else on this post too -- I haven't had a chance to look at all your replies yet, but will. Thanks again.

• You can use the length function to find out how long a string is.
• You can use substr to get the first 35 characters. And to get the last 15.
• Assuming you put the first 35 characters in $start and the last 15 characters in $end you can put your variables in quotes to get the new link label...
  

      my $label = "$begin...$end";
  [download]

$url =~ s/^(.{35}).{3,}(.{15})$/$1...$2/;
[download]

Update: replaced an asterix with a plus so the elipsis will replace at least one character.

Update: changed the plus to {3,} and the 53 to 35. Thanks madhatter

-caedes

I think bobafifi wanted the first 35 characters, the elipsis, and the last 15 characters if the URL was over 53 characters long.

Update The updated regex works unless the URL is exactly 53 characters long. In that case I believe bobafifi wants the URL to stay the same (although I could be wrong). Here is one that (as far as I can tell) works for any length...

$url =~ s/^(.{35})(?=.{19}).+(.{15})$/$1...$2/;
[download]

The updated regex works unless the URL is exactly 53 characters long. In that case I believe bobafifi wants the URL to stay the same

In that case, the ".{3,}" in caedes' code should become ".{4,}". Indeed, I see no reason to replace the correct string of 3 characters, by 3 dots. The code would become:

$url =~ s/^(.{35}).{4,}(.{15})$/$1...$2/;
[download]

I would be tempted to throw in a "?" to reduce the greediness of the middle subppatern, but it wouldn't help one bit, here.

Yeah, I'll see about fixing that up.

-caedes

use Benchmark qw(timethese cmpthese);

$url = 'http://www.larryandnatalie.com/isapi.dll/c/content/f/viewprope
+rty/siteid/wb5KAM/contentclass/PICT/contentid/ZZZZZZVR/propertyname/O
+riginal/~/yamaha_58_page_11_jpg.jpg';

$r = timethese( -5, {
    'regex' => sub{$url =~ s/^(.{35})(?=.{19}).+(.{15})$/$1...$2/;},
    'substr' => sub{$url = substr($linktext, 0, 35) . "..." . substr($
+linktext, -15) if length($linktext) > 53;},
});

cmpthese $r;

__END__
Benchmark: running regex, substr for at least 5 CPU seconds...
     regex:  2 wallclock secs ( 5.07 usr + -0.07 sys =  5.00 CPU) @ 63
+3939.80/s (n=3169699)
    substr:  6 wallclock secs ( 4.69 usr +  0.34 sys =  5.03 CPU) @ 35
+32631.81/s (n=17769138)
            Rate  regex substr
regex   633940/s     --   -82%
substr 3532632/s   457%     --
[download]

Nothing to do with Perl, but when I wrote some code to do roughly this, I added at TITLE attribute to the link, something like TITLE="URL displayed has been shortened for formatting reasons" just so people would get a bit of a hint that they couldn't actually cut and paste or print the URL from display for later use, that they should bookmark, or use the "copy link" function.

And I put square brackets around the ellipsis to make it more apparent too.

And I was going to get around to some code that showed you what the actual document at the end of the URL was, if applicable, for instance a long URL ending in .jpg would get truncated to http://blah.com/[...]/flute.jpg and the like. I never did get around to doing that, and anyway, most of the really long ones were caused by query-strings, not huge directory structures.
--

“Every bit of code is either naturally related to the problem at hand, or else it's an accidental side effect of the fact that you happened to solve the problem using a digital computer.”
M-J D

The WWW::Shorten module provides an interface to several short URL generators.

--
John.

Update: Fixed WWW::Shorten link.

That'd be WWW::Shorten.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.