How can I truncate my strings with a "..." if they are too long?

Question

Hope somebody has a good idea. I have strings like this:

abcdefg abcde abc 

What I need is for them to be trucated to show like this if more than a specified lenght:

abc .. abc .. abc 

Is there any simple C# code I can use for this?

Answer 1

Here is the logic wrapped up in an extension method:

public static string Truncate(this string value, int maxChars) {     return value.Length <= maxChars ? value : value.Substring(0, maxChars) + "..."; } 

Usage:

var s = "abcdefg";  Console.WriteLine(s.Truncate(3)); 

Answer 2

All very good answers, but to clean it up just a little, if your strings are sentences, don't break your string in the middle of a word.

private string TruncateForDisplay(this string value, int length) {   if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return string.Empty;   var returnValue = value;   if (value.Length > length)   {     var tmp = value.Substring(0, length) ;     if (tmp.LastIndexOf(' ') > 0)        returnValue = tmp.Substring(0, tmp.LastIndexOf(' ') ) + " ...";   }                   return returnValue; }