Only one match needed. 

if (length($string) > 15) {
  $string =~ s/^(.{0,12})\b\s.*/$1.../gi;
}

[download]

cLive ;-)

Update:

MeowChow pointed out typo - missed out .* (had it on other machine running demo :)

Actually, if there's a chance that the first word will be longer than 15 chars, you'd need to expand this a bit to cut off the end of the first word. Oh hell, let's change a few things here: 

if (length($string) > 15) {
  unless ($string =~ s/^(.{0,12})\b\s.*/$1.../gi) {
    $string = substr ($string, 0, 12) . '...';
  }
}

[download]

Finally, I disagree with MeowChow (below). I think \b *is* needed. Otherwise this could happen:

A Satsuma - Orange would become A Satsuma -... </CODE>

In reply to Re: Smart Substrings by cLive ;-)
in thread Smart Substrings by cei

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