my $str  = "mom went to the food market today and got me some milk";
my $maxl = 18;
my $show;
foreach (split(/\s+/, $str)) {
    if (length("$show $_")+3 >= $maxl) { $show .= '...' and last }
    else                               { $show .= " $_"          }
}
print substr($show, 1),"\n";
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two things:
1) if you have more than one space between words, it's gonna reduce it to one in resulting string
2) it doesn't do it for $maxl=0 (ie outputs '..')


vsp