Tiny way to get the first 25 characters

Question

Can anyone think of a nicer way to do the following:

public string ShortDescription
{
    get { return this.Description.Length <= 25 ? this.Description : this.Description.Substring(0, 25) + "..."; }
}

I would have liked to just do string.Substring(0, 25) but it throws an exception if the string is less than the length supplied.

Answer 1

I needed this so often, I wrote an extension method for it:

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string SafeSubstring(this string input, int startIndex, int length, string suffix)
    {
        // Todo: Check that startIndex + length does not cause an arithmetic overflow - not that this is likely, but still...
        if (input.Length >= (startIndex + length))
        {
            if (suffix == null) suffix = string.Empty;
            return input.Substring(startIndex, length) + suffix;
        }
        else
        {
            if (input.Length > startIndex)
            {
                return input.Substring(startIndex);
            }
            else
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }
        }
    }
}

if you only need it once, that is overkill, but if you need it more often then it can come in handy.

Edit: Added support for a string suffix. Pass in "..." and you get your ellipses on shorter strings, or pass in string.Empty for no special suffixes.

Answer 2

return this.Description.Substring(0, Math.Min(this.Description.Length, 25));

Doesn't have the ... part. Your way is probably the best, actually.

Answer 3

public static Take(this string s, int i)
{
    if(s.Length <= i)
        return s
    else
        return s.Substring(0, i) + "..."
}

public string ShortDescription
{
    get { return this.Description.Take(25); }
}