Recent Posts – How to trim title length

Hey guys,

I’m using a dynamic sidebar with several widgets and I would like to trim the title/links display length once they reach a certain number of characters. I’ve found a function that’ll probably do what I need but I’ve got no idea how to apply it properly.

/**
* Add this to your page:
* <?php
* include “shorten_a_text_string.php”;
* echo ShortenText($text);
* ?>
* where $text is the text you want to shorten.
*
* Example
* Test it using this in a PHP page:
* <?php
* include “shortentext.php”;
* $text = “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”;
* echo ShortenText($text);
* ?>
*/

<?php
function ShortenText($text)
    {
        // Change to the number of characters you want to display
        $chars = 25;
        $text = $text." ";
        $text = substr($text,0,$chars);
        $text = substr($text,0,strrpos($text,' '));
        $text = $text."...";
        return $text;
    }
?>

Hope you understand what I mean. Any help would be awesome, thanks.