Truncate string on whole words in .NET C#

Try the following. It is pretty rudimentary. Just finds the first space starting at the desired length.

public static string TruncateAtWord(this string value, int length) {
    if (value == null || value.Length < length || value.IndexOf(" ", length) == -1)
        return value;

    return value.Substring(0, value.IndexOf(" ", length));
}

Thanks for your answer Dave. I've tweaked the function a bit and this is what I'm using ... unless there are any more comments ;)

public static string TruncateAtWord(this string input, int length)
{
    if (input == null || input.Length < length)
        return input;
    int iNextSpace = input.LastIndexOf(" ", length, StringComparison.Ordinal);
    return string.Format("{0}…", input.Substring(0, (iNextSpace > 0) ? iNextSpace : length).Trim());
}

My contribution:

public static string TruncateAtWord(string text, int maxCharacters, string trailingStringIfTextCut = "…")
{
    if (text == null || (text = text.Trim()).Length <= maxCharacters) 
      return text;

    int trailLength = trailingStringIfTextCut.StartsWith("&") ? 1 
                                                              : trailingStringIfTextCut.Length; 
    maxCharacters = maxCharacters - trailLength >= 0 ? maxCharacters - trailLength 
                                                     : 0;
    int pos = text.LastIndexOf(" ", maxCharacters);
    if (pos >= 0)
        return text.Substring(0, pos) + trailingStringIfTextCut;

    return string.Empty;
}

This is what I use in my projects, with optional trailing. Text will never exceed the maxCharacters + trailing text length.

If you are using windows forms, in the Graphics.DrawString method, there is an option in StringFormat to specify if the string should be truncated, if it does not fit into the area specified. This will handle adding the ellipsis as necessary.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.drawing.stringtrimming.aspx