Sorry if I was misleading, I was timing using a regexp vs substr to get the first 200 characters of a string.

The thing is, it doesn't matter how fast you are if you are giving the incorrect result. I was taking into account that a paragraph would have a newline on the end of each line. 

original: [241] 'I need to extract the first several words from a para
+graph of text 
contained in a $var, so as to get the longest extract that's less than
+ or 
equal to 200 characters. My brute-force-and-ignorance method is: blah 
some more text here etc etc'

japhy: [66] 'I need to extract the first several words from a paragrap
+h of text'

george: [241] 'I need to extract the first several words from a paragr
+aph of text 
contained in a $var, so as to get the longest extract that's less than
+ or 
equal to 200 characters. My brute-force-and-ignorance method is: blah 
some more text here etc etc'

gav^: [194] 'I need to extract the first several words from a paragrap
+h of text contained in a $var, so as to get the longest extract that'
+s less than or equal to 200 characters. My brute-force-and-ignorance'

Hofmator: [53] 'equal to 200 characters. My brute-force-and-ignorance'

[download]
But as it turns out my code is 30 times slower than japhy's :)

gav^

In reply to Re: Re3: Regex: get first N characters but break at whitespace by gav^
in thread Regex: get first N characters but break at whitespace by George_Sherston

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