C#: Limit number of characters in text to a certain length

June 19, 2012 C# Snippet

Sometimes just cutting a too long string will do the job, but sometimes you might want a more content aware cut.

This little snippet takes two parameters: the text to (if too long) truncate and the required max length. If the text is within the max length nothing is done, the text is returned as is. Otherwise the code will try to break at the last stop character or after last word (depending on how the sentence is structured).

public static string LimitCharacters(string text, int length) {
    if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(text)) {
        return string.Empty;
    }

    // If text in shorter or equal to length, just return it
    if (text.Length <= length) {
        return text;
    }

    // Text is longer, so try to find out where to cut
    char[] delimiters = new char[] { ' ', '.', ',', ':', ';' };
    int index = text.LastIndexOfAny(delimiters, length - 3);

    if (index > (length / 2)) {
        return text.Substring(0, index) + "...";
    }
    else {
        return text.Substring(0, length - 3) + "...";
    }
}

C#: Limit number of characters in text to a certain length

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