You can return immediately if the string is less than or equal to the desired length. Then it depends on what you want to do to make it pretty. I have a couple of routines like this: 

sub shorten_string {
    my ( $string, $length ) = @_;
    $length ||= 64;
    $length = 10 if $length < 10;
  return $string unless length($string) > $length;
    my $chunk = int($length/2)-3;
  return substr($string,0,$chunk+1) . ' ... ' . substr($string,-$chunk
+);
}

sub shorten_url {
    my ( $url, $length ) = @_;
    $length ||= 64;
  return $url unless $url and  length($url) > $length;
    ( $url ) = split /\?/, $url;
  return $url if length($url) < $length or $url =~ m!\w+://[^/]+/?$!;
    $url =~ s!(\w+://[^/]+)!!;
    my $domain = $1 ? "$1/ ... " : '... ';
    $length -= length $domain;
  return $domain if $length < 1;
    my @bits = split '/', $url;
    my @keepers = $url =~ m!/$! ? ('') : ();
    my $tail = 1;
    while ( my $bit = pop @bits ) {
        next unless $bit;
        $length -= (length($bit) + 1);
        unshift @keepers, $bit if $tail or $length > 0;
        $tail = 0;
      last if $length < 1;
    }
  return @keepers ? ( "$domain/".join'/',@keepers ) : $domain;
}

[download]

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: In search of a better way to trim string length by tachyon
in thread In search of a better way to trim string by kiat

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.