I am trying to truncate some long text in C#, but I don't want my string to be cut off part way through a word. Does anyone have a function that I can use to truncate my string at the end of a word?
E.g:
"This was a long string..."
Not:
"This was a long st..."
Taking into account more than just a blank space separator (e.g. words can be separated by periods followed by newlines, followed by tabs, etc.), and several other edge cases, here is an appropriate extension method:
public static string GetMaxWords(this string input, int maxWords, string truncateWith = "...", string additionalSeparators = ",-_:")
{
int words = 1;
bool IsSeparator(char c) => Char.IsSeparator(c) || additionalSeparators.Contains(c);
IEnumerable<char> IterateChars()
{
yield return input[0];
for (int i = 1; i < input.Length; i++)
{
if (IsSeparator(input[i]) && !IsSeparator(input[i - 1]))
if (words == maxWords)
{
foreach (char c in truncateWith)
yield return c;
break;
}
else
words++;
yield return input[i];
}
}
return !input.IsNullOrEmpty()
? new String(IterateChars().ToArray())
: String.Empty;
}