substr() not working to trim the_content() in wordpress widget

Question

<div class="wpex-recent-posts-content clr">
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a><p>
<?php
    $content = the_content();
    echo substr($content,0,100);
?>
</p>
</div>

here echo substr($content,0,100); is not working to crop content from 0 to 100. This is located in my_theme/functions/widgets/widget-portfolio-posts-thumbs.php

Answer 1

Try this one:

$content = get_the_content();
$content = strip_tags($content);
echo substr($content, 0, 100);