Truncate string to 7 characters

[nawlej]

What is the easiest way to truncate a string down to 7 characters? I have a string, which can contain letters, numbers, underscores,dashes, etc etc....that needs to be formatted down. Any ideas?

 

[nawlej]

perhaps:????

s/(.......)(*)/$1/;

 

[nawlej]

I did s/(\D\D\D\D\D\D\D)(.*)/$1/;

Better way??

 

[toolkit]

Or how about:

$str = qq{123456789};
$str = substr($str,0,7);
print "$str\n";

Cheers, Neil

 

[domster]

Am I missing something here? Why wouldn't you just use sprintf?

 

[toolkit]

True, you can use:

$str = sprintf("%.7s", $str);

Buyt why not use substr? That's what its for.

 

[nawlej]

All good ideas.....I went with substr, I needed the variable for other things than print.

 

[spydermonkey]

Here's a fun way to do it (untested).

my @array = split(//, $string);

my $count = -1;
my $newstring;

for ( 1 .. 7 )
{
$count++;
$newstring = $newstring . $array[$count];
}

print $newstring;